Ringfort (Cashel), Kilcurrivard, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Kilcurrivard, Co. Galway

On an east-facing slope in Kilcurrivard, a low spread of collapsed stonework traces the outline of an early Irish cashel, a type of stone-walled ringfort that once enclosed a farmstead or small settlement.

What catches the attention here is not grandeur but a subtle anomaly: at the northern arc of the wall, the outer face curves inward in a way that suggests the presence of a souterrain beneath, one of those narrow underground stone-lined passages that were built during the early medieval period, probably used for storage or as a place of refuge.

The structure is oval in plan, measuring roughly thirty metres on its northeast to southwest axis and twenty-four metres across, and it is defined today by little more than the tumbled remains of a drystone wall. Drystone construction, where stones are fitted together without mortar, was the standard technique for cashels of this kind, and the collapse of the wall over centuries has left the perimeter more as a grass-grown scatter of rubble than a standing barrier. Close by to the southwest, the remains of associated houses survive separately, suggesting this was once a small but complete domestic complex rather than an isolated enclosure.

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Pete F
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