Ringfort (Cashel), Graigeen, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Ringforts
A ringfort with no visible entrance is an unusual thing.
Most of these early medieval enclosures, built predominantly between the sixth and tenth centuries as defended farmsteads, have at least one clear gap in their enclosing bank where a timber gate once hung. The cashel at Graigeen in County Limerick offers no such obvious point of entry, its broad flat-topped stone bank running continuously around a circular interior roughly 35 metres across without any evident break. Whether the original entrance has been obscured by later disturbance or simply survives in a form no longer easy to read from ground level, the effect is quietly disorienting.
A cashel is simply the stone equivalent of an earthen ringfort, a rath, and this one sits on a gentle south-west-facing slope where limestone outcrops through the ground around it. The enclosing bank is substantial: just over seven metres wide at the top, standing around a metre high on the interior face and slightly less on the exterior. It is best preserved along the arc running from east to south, while the north-west section narrows considerably, to roughly 4.7 metres across. The site has not escaped modern interference. Ground immediately outside the enclosure on the western and north-north-western sides has been cleared by mechanical digger, and boulders displaced in that process have been dumped both on top of the bank and at its external base at the north-north-east and south-east. A farm passage now runs approximately ten metres to the west, following the line of a removed field boundary. The record was compiled by Denis Power and uploaded in August 2011.
The enclosure sits in pasture, so access depends on the co-operation of the landowner and the season's grazing arrangements. The interior is thickly covered with nettles, which makes any close inspection of the ground surface uncomfortable in summer; stout boots and long trousers are sensible precautions. At the centre of the enclosure stands a mature sycamore, the kind of self-seeded opportunist that tends to colonise undisturbed ground over decades. The dumped boulders along the bank's outer face are worth noting when reading the monument's profile, since they can make the bank appear more substantial in places than its original construction would suggest.