Ringfort (Cashel), Lyroe, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Ringforts
On a south-west-facing slope in rough mountain grazing in County Cork, a roughly circular stone enclosure sits in various stages of quiet collapse, its walls reduced in places to little more than a grassy ridge.
What makes this cashel, the Irish term for a stone-walled ringfort, particularly worth attention is the scatter of large stones lying just outside its southern entrance. These may be the remnants of a chevaux-de-frise, a defensive arrangement of upright or densely packed stones placed to slow or deter approach on foot or horseback. Such features are relatively rare in Irish ringfort archaeology, and their presence here, however eroded, hints at a settlement that once felt some need to advertise its defences.
The enclosure measures approximately 27 metres east to west and 26 metres north to south, enclosed by a collapsed stone wall roughly five metres thick, with a gap of about three metres surviving to the north and a proper entrance, nearly three metres wide, to the south. Inside, the details accumulate. A roofless chamber sits just east of the entrance, abutting the interior face of the cashel wall, and extends further east as a lower, narrower passage barely a metre wide and less than a metre high, roofed with stone lintels. This type of underground or semi-underground passage is known as a souterrain, and a separate one has been recorded in the south-west quadrant of the interior. Souterrains were commonly used for storage or as a refuge during early medieval occupation. Stone paving survives in the south-east quadrant. An arc of walling abuts the western interior wall, and when the archaeologist Hartnett recorded the site in 1939, two low stone mounds, each about a foot high, stood on either side of it. The western mound has since disappeared. A second arc of walling against the north-west wall was not noted by Hartnett at all, and may represent a later sheep shelter rather than original fabric.