Ringfort (Cashel), Glennafosha, Co. Galway

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Ringfort (Cashel), Glennafosha, Co. Galway

In a level field in Glennafosha, County Galway, a large oval enclosure sits so thoroughly absorbed into the landscape that it takes a trained eye to recognise it for what it is.

The structure is a cashel, the term used for a ringfort built from stone rather than an earthen bank, and this one measures roughly 55 metres north to south and 40 metres east to west. At that scale it would once have been a substantial enclosure, quite possibly the fortified farmstead of an early medieval family of some local standing. Today, the defining wall has collapsed and grassed over entirely, and a modern field wall cuts straight through the monument on both the eastern and western sides, indifferent to whatever came before it.

What makes this particular site quietly arresting is a detail in the southern half of the interior: a funnel-shaped pile of collapsed stone, approximately 11 metres long and 10 metres wide, with a central depression at its heart. The shape is suggestive. A hollow at the centre of a rubble mound inside a cashel can sometimes indicate a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that early medieval farmers used for cool storage or, in times of danger, as a place of concealment. No excavation appears to have confirmed this, and the mound may simply be the remnant of an internal structure that has fallen in on itself over the centuries. Either way, the feature sits there unremarked in the overgrown grass, its purpose unresolved.

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Pete F
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