Ringfort (Cashel), Dangan, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
Two ancient enclosures sitting within roughly forty metres of each other in the same stretch of Co. Clare woodland is not what you would call a coincidence.
This ringfort, a roughly circular enclosure about thirty-three to thirty-five metres across, occupies a ridge just off its crown in mixed woodland at Dangan, and its nearest neighbour to the south-west is a cashel, the term used for a stone-walled enclosure of broadly similar type and period. The two monuments share the same elevated ground, which commands good views down to lower-lying land to the north and north-west, and their proximity suggests they may have formed part of the same settlement or landholding at some point in the early medieval period.
The enclosure itself is defined by a collapsed stone wall, moss-covered and weathered, that still reads clearly in the landscape despite centuries of neglect. At its north and north-east arc the wall is best preserved, reaching an exterior height of around 1.2 metres, while the north-north-east section is considerably more degraded. The overall width of the wall, at nearly seven metres, speaks to an original structure of some substance. A gap on the western side, just over a metre wide at its base, marks what appears to be the original entrance. Along the south-east exterior, a shallow linear channel runs roughly east-north-east to west-south-west, skirting the monument's outer edge. A trackway to the south-west of the enclosure curves in a way that seems deliberately to respect the monument's boundaries, which hints at a long continuity of use, or at least of awareness, in the landscape around it.
The interior slopes gently eastward and is now colonised by trees and briars, which makes a close inspection of the ground surface difficult. The monument was recorded as an 'Enclosure' rather than a ringfort in earlier surveys, a classification that reflects some uncertainty about function rather than any doubt about its antiquity. Its position overlooking the companion cashel to the south-west gives the site an added layer of interest for anyone willing to push through the woodland to find both structures in the same visit.