Ringfort (Cashel), Croagh, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Croagh, Co. Clare

On a raised patch of rough pasture in County Clare, a roughly circular stone enclosure sits quietly within a landscape that has been farmed and divided across multiple periods of human activity.

This is a cashel, a type of early medieval ringfort built from stone rather than earthen banks and ditches, and it commands open views to all sides from its slightly elevated position, which was almost certainly part of its original purpose.

The structure measures approximately 22.4 metres east to west and 22 metres north to south, making it a modest but coherent enclosure. Its defining wall, averaging around 2.5 metres wide and surviving to between 0.4 and 0.8 metres in height, was built from horizontally laid thin slabs. The outer face of this wall is still legible almost all the way around, except between the east and south-east sections, while no inner facing survives. A short stretch of double-wall construction runs along the south-south-east to south-south-west arc, suggesting either a reinforcement or a more complex original design in that section. Two gaps in the wall, one a metre wide on the east side and a narrower one of 0.6 metres on the west, are thought to be the work of cattle rather than original entrances. The site was already recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1916, and it sits within a broader field system whose various phases of use stretch across different periods of the past, suggesting this corner of Clare has been shaped and reshaped by successive generations of farmers and builders long before and after the cashel itself was raised.

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Pete F
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