Ringfort (Cashel), Cloghballymore, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Cloghballymore, Co. Galway

Some sites are notable for what they once were; this one in Cloghballymore, County Galway, is perhaps more notable for what it no longer is.

A cashel, the Irish term for a stone ringfort, is a roughly circular or oval enclosure defined by a drystone wall, typically built in the early medieval period to demarcate a farmstead or territory. The example recorded here was an oval structure measuring approximately 38.4 metres by 32.9 metres, its boundary formed by a double-faced drystone wall, meaning two parallel lines of carefully laid stone with rubble packed between them. By the time anyone looked closely at it again in the twentieth century, it had already begun its disappearance.

The fort was catalogued by McCaffrey in 1952, who described it as a stone fort and gave it dimensions suggesting a reasonably substantial enclosure. By that point it sat within woodland, which can, paradoxically, both protect and damage ancient earthworks, the tree cover keeping out ploughs while root systems and forestry operations slowly disturb the underlying archaeology. When the site was inspected in May 1992, what greeted the investigators was a large mound of earth and stone and evidence of forestry clearance across an area of roughly 70 metres by 50 metres. No visible surface trace of the monument survived at that point. Subsequent aerial photography revealed something more final: agricultural sheds had been constructed directly on the site, effectively ending any prospect of recovery or future investigation.

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