Ringfort (Cashel), Croagh, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
A circular stone enclosure sits on a rise above the Rathborney River in County Clare, easy to miss from a distance and difficult to read up close, its walls reduced over centuries to a low, overgrown bank that only hints at what once stood here.
A cashel, which is a stone-built ringfort of the early medieval period, typically enclosed a farmstead or the residence of a local landowner of moderate means, and this one conforms to the type in its modest scale and its commanding position across open pasture.
The enclosure measures roughly 25 metres in diameter, defined by a bank of stone and earth between 3.4 and 5 metres wide and standing no more than 0.9 metres high at its best-preserved points. Occasional stretches of external and internal stone facing survive, though none rises above 0.3 metres. A short length of bank extends southward from the south-southeast, possibly the remnant of an annexe or an outwork. The scholar T.J. Westropp noted what appears to be this same structure in 1901, describing it as a "nearly levelled caher opposite Fuanaroosca", suggesting the site was already well degraded by the turn of the twentieth century. The fort was recorded on the 1916 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, marked with the hachure symbols surveyors used to indicate earthworks, and was formally catalogued as an enclosure in the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996.
The interior slopes sharply to the east and is heavily overgrown, which makes any clear sense of the original layout hard to recover on the ground. What the site does preserve is its setting: positioned in a bend of the Rathborney River with open views from the northwest through to the east, the rise on which it sits would have offered both a degree of natural protection and a clear sightline across the surrounding landscape.