Ringfort (Cashel), Iskancullin, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Iskancullin, Co. Clare

On a limestone plateau in County Clare, a low grassy ridge traces the outline of a cashel that most walkers would pass without a second glance.

A cashel is a stone-walled ringfort, the enclosed farmstead of an early medieval family, and this one at Iskancullin is defined by a subcircular wall, roughly 20 metres north to south and 28 metres east to west, that has long since been absorbed into the turf. What gives it a quiet coherence is the additional wall that extends from the cashel at the south-east, running out into the surrounding field system; it is not a later addition but a contemporary feature, suggesting that the enclosure and its attached land were planned and built as a single unit.

The site sits within an extensive field system on a gentle south-facing slope, a practical choice that would have offered some shelter and reasonable light for whoever farmed here in the early medieval period. Cashels of this kind are found across the limestone landscapes of Clare and Galway, where stone was more readily available than timber for construction. The wall here has not been excavated or closely dated, but its form is consistent with the hundreds of similar enclosures scattered across the Burren and its fringes. The site was reported to the National Monuments Service by Conn Herriott, which is how it entered the formal record at all; many comparable features in this part of Ireland remain unregistered simply because no one has yet walked the ground with a careful eye.

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Pete F
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