Ringfort (Cashel), Lislarheenmore, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Lislarheenmore, Co. Clare

What you are looking at, if you know where to look, is a cashel: a type of ringfort built from stone rather than earth and timber, typically dating from the early medieval period in Ireland.

The one at Lislarheenmore sits on a narrow north-south terrace on the eastern side of the Caher valley in County Clare, with higher ground pressing in from the east and the land dropping away steeply to the west. It is large, oval, and badly weathered, its walls now little more than a low spread of grass-covered stone, but the underlying structure is still legible if you read the ground carefully.

The cashel measures roughly 42 metres north to south and 38 metres east to west internally, which places it comfortably in the larger range for this type of enclosure. The outer facing-stones survive in places, and at the north-north-east the original entrance gap, just one metre wide, is still identifiable. It is flanked on its south-east side by a large flagstone laid transversely across the wall line and on the north-west by four horizontally coursed flags, the kind of deliberate stonework that suggests the entrance once had some presence. Inside, the foundations of a substantial rectangular building occupy the centre, and a short right-angled length of stone spread to the east may represent a second internal structure. A modern wall has been built along the line of the old outer facing, and a second, narrower gap at the south appears to be a later addition rather than an original feature. An animal pen abuts the northern wall, evidence that the site has continued to shape agricultural activity long after its original use was forgotten. The cashel sits within a multiperiod field system and appears on both the 1840 and 1916 editions of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, which suggests it was a visible landmark for centuries before anyone began recording it formally. Another enclosure lies roughly 30 metres to the south-south-east, hinting that this corner of the Caher valley was once rather busier than it appears today.

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