Ringfort (Cashel), Poulbaun, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Poulbaun, Co. Clare

At the south-western end of a low ridge in County Clare, two ancient stone enclosures sit within sight of one another, separated by a stretch of improved pasture.

The closer of the two is an oval cashel, a type of stone-walled ringfort common across Ireland's west, and what makes this particular example quietly compelling is not any grandeur but the opposite: the accumulated evidence of centuries of reuse, adaptation, and slow collapse, all legible in the stonework to a careful eye.

The cashel measures roughly 31 metres north to south and 29 metres east to west internally, its boundary defined by a wide spread of stone up to 7.4 metres across. Later drystone walling was laid directly over the earlier fabric, and fragments of inner facing-stones survive at the north, east, and south, with a better-preserved outer face still standing to 0.8 metres on the western side. A narrow gap just east of south, flanked by thin upright flags set into the inner wall face, is likely the original entrance. Running northward from it for about 6 metres is a moss-covered line of collapsed stones that may represent an internal dividing wall. Inside the enclosure, a small square structure, roughly 3 metres by 3 metres, appears to be a later animal pen, inserted into the site long after its original purpose had been forgotten. Two small oval shelters of similar construction sit directly on top of the cashel wall at the north, their single-course walling confirming a pattern of pragmatic reoccupation. The site appeared on the 1915 edition of the six-inch Ordnance Survey map, and a further enclosure is recorded approximately 80 metres to the south-south-west. The cashel and its near neighbour to the north-north-east both fall within a broader prehistoric or early medieval field system, suggesting this corner of Clare was once a much more organised and densely settled landscape than the present pasture implies.

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