Ringfort (Cashel), Oughtdarra, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Oughtdarra, Co. Clare

What catches the eye at Oughtdarra is not the cashel itself so much as what sits inside it.

A cashel is a ringfort built from stone rather than earthen banks, and this one in County Clare is irregular in plan, roughly 29 metres north to south and 28 metres east to west. But within its interior, pressed against the northern wall, is a separate rectangular structure with walls nearly four metres thick at the south side, a massiveness that sits oddly against the later, flimsier enclosure surrounding it. The whole site is now smothered in whitethorn, hazel, and briars, tucked into a low-lying hollow about a hundred metres from a vertical rock face, which gives it a sheltered, half-buried quality.

The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp visited and described the site in 1905, and his observation cuts to the heart of what makes it interesting. He noted it as a late circular enclosure containing a much older-looking semicircular mound inside, meaning even at the turn of the twentieth century there was a visible tension between two phases of construction, one clearly predating the other. The cashel wall is best preserved along the north-west, where a stretch of about fifteen metres survives to an external height of 1.4 metres, though the upper courses there are considered of uncertain date, possibly later repair or addition. A gap in the north-east may have served as a cattle entrance at some point. The site sits within a multiperiod field system, suggesting the landscape around it was organised and reorganised across several generations, and a hut site lies about 35 metres to the east, with a further enclosure roughly 77 metres to the north-east. The cluster points to sustained, layered activity in this corner of Clare rather than a single episode of building.

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