Ringfort (Cashel), Rakerin, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Rakerin, Co. Galway

In a field in Rakerin, on an east-facing slope in undulating Galway pastureland, a circular stone enclosure sits quietly collapsing into the ground.

It is a cashel, a type of ringfort built from drystone walling rather than earthen banks, and at roughly 24 metres in diameter it would once have enclosed a modest but defensible farmstead, most likely dating to the early medieval period. Today, very little of that original structure is legible at first glance. The enclosing wall has largely fallen in on itself, the whole circuit is grassed over, and brambles and bushes have claimed much of the interior.

What makes the site quietly interesting is how later land use has written itself over the older remains. A field wall, presumably built by farmers in more recent centuries who had little concern for, or perhaps no knowledge of, what lay beneath, runs directly over the cashel's enclosing element from the north-east around to the east. This kind of overlay is not uncommon in the Irish countryside, where ancient monuments were routinely pressed into service as convenient building material or boundary markers. One detail that survives with some integrity is a gap of about 2.5 metres on the north-west side of the cashel, which may represent the original entrance. Cashel entrances were typically narrow and deliberately positioned, and if this gap is genuine rather than a later breach, it offers a small but tangible connection to the people who built and used the enclosure well over a thousand years ago.

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Pete F
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