Ringfort (Cashel), Feenagh, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Feenagh, Co. Clare

On a west-facing slope between Gleninagh Mountain and Cappanawalla Hill in County Clare, a low, grass-covered spread of stone traces the outline of an ancient cashel, a type of early medieval stone ringfort used as a defended farmstead enclosure.

What is quietly odd about this one is not the ruin itself but what has been done with it: a later field wall was built directly on top of the collapsed rampart, repurposing the ancient boundary as agricultural infrastructure and converting the interior into an ordinary small paddock. The cashel's oval outline, roughly 25 metres north to south and 22 metres east to west, can still be read beneath the tumble, but it takes a moment to separate the early medieval from the post-medieval.

The site sits within a larger field system on the eastern side of the valley, and it is far from alone. At least three other cashels lie in close proximity along the same stretch of ground. Around 140 metres to the south-east is a now heavily denuded cashel, its features largely lost to time. Further along, approximately 370 metres south-east, stands the more substantial Caherfeenagh. Then, roughly 590 metres south-east, comes Lismacsheedy, a cliff-edge fort, which is precisely what it sounds like: a defended enclosure positioned at the very edge of a cliff, using the natural drop as part of its defensive perimeter. The concentration of four cashels within a single field system in this relatively compact area points to a landscape that was once intensively settled and organised, whatever that organisation looked like in practice. The site was already marked with a solid line on Ordnance Survey maps in both 1842 and 1915, suggesting its outline was legible even then.

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Pete F
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