Ringfort (Cashel), Clooneen, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
Most ringforts in Ireland are roughly circular, so the rectangular outline of this cashel in Clooneen, County Clare, sets it apart immediately.
A cashel is a ringfort defined by a stone wall rather than an earthen bank, and this one, measuring approximately 30.5 metres east-northeast to west-southwest and just under 30 metres north-northwest to south-southeast, sits near the foot of a south-facing slope in rough pasture, its views restricted by the terrain around it. It is not a dramatic promontory site or a commanding hilltop; it occupies a quieter, more functional position within what appears to be a large and long-used field system whose origins span multiple periods.
The cashel is defined by a double-faced stone wall with rounded corners, the outer face composed of quite large, horizontally laid stones, each roughly half a metre long and wide. That outer face has been partially obscured or replaced: at the western end of the southern side it is absent entirely, and a later drystone wall, around 0.6 metres high, has been built directly over it, layering one era of construction onto another. The inner wall-face survives only on the eastern side, and a spread of rubble up to 6.6 metres wide accumulates against both faces, suggesting the wall was once considerably more substantial. A possible entrance, roughly 2.7 metres wide, is readable at the southern end of the eastern wall through two traceable lines in the collapsed rubble. Inside the enclosure, two structures were built at a later point, one against the western side and another in the south-eastern corner, suggesting the cashel continued to be used, or at least occupied, well after its original construction. A second cashel lies approximately 74 metres to the north-west, indicating that this was not an isolated farmstead but part of a broader pattern of early settlement across this part of Clare. The site was recorded on the Ordnance Survey 25-inch plan of 1897 and on the 1920 edition of the six-inch map, labelled at that stage simply as an enclosure.