Ringfort (Cashel), Monavaddra, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Ringforts
On a north-facing slope in the rough grazing land of Monavaddra, there is a stone ringfort whose builders went to considerable trouble to make a level living space out of an awkward hillside.
The interior has been cut into the slope on the south-west side and built up on the north-east to compensate, a detail that rewards a second look once you understand what you are seeing underfoot. A cashel, as this type of ringfort is known, is simply a ringfort whose enclosing boundary is built in stone rather than earthen bank and ditch, and this one has survived in reasonable shape across a grassy hillside that has never been brought into cultivation.
The structure is roughly circular, about 24 metres across. Its boundary combines a standing stone wall, still reaching 2.2 metres high along the eastern to west-north-west arc, with a natural or partly shaped scarp that rises to an impressive 4.2 metres along the remaining stretch. The entrance, 2.5 metres wide, faces south-east. Built into the thickness of the wall on the south-west side is a small rectangular enclosure, ten metres long and five wide, closed on its eastern side by a low coursed stone wall. Its purpose is not recorded, though comparable annexes in Irish cashels are sometimes interpreted as animal pens or storage spaces. What may be the remains of a lime kiln, a structure used to burn limestone into quicklime for agricultural or building use, sits in the scarp to the east. Most intriguing is a setting of four stones near the centre of the interior, which may belong to an earlier or later phase of activity entirely unrelated to the cashel itself. Whether those stones mark a boundary, a hearth, or something else altogether, they introduce a quiet uncertainty into an otherwise legible monument.