Ringfort (Cashel), Loughcurra, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
Beneath a later field wall on the outskirts of Loughcurra, an older boundary quietly persists.
A cashel, the term for a ringfort enclosed by a drystone rather than earthen wall, once formed a complete circle here, roughly twenty-five metres across. Today only fragments of that circuit survive above ground, and even those are in poor shape, the wall having collapsed for much of its arc from the south-west around through the west to the north-west. To the east and south, the cashel's line has been absorbed into a later field wall running north-east to south-west, the kind of gradual overwriting that happened across Ireland as early medieval enclosures lost their social function and became convenient ready-made boundaries for post-medieval agriculture.
Cashels of this kind were typically built and occupied during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, and served as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or small kin group. The drystone construction reflects the stony character of much of Connacht's landscape, where loose field clearance provided ready building material. The Loughcurra example sits on a rise in rough pastureland, a modest elevation of the sort that early medieval farmers favoured for drainage and visibility, though nothing about this particular site survives in a condition that speaks to any specific period of use or any identifiable occupants.