Ringfort (Cashel), Staigue, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ringforts
A few kilometres from the celebrated Staigue Fort, one of Ireland's finest surviving stone ringforts, there sits a considerably humbler relation that does not even appear on Ordnance Survey maps.
This circular caher, a dry-stone enclosure of the kind built across Ireland from the early medieval period onward, occupies a level terrace on the western side of the Staigue river valley. It looks south across a wide, open prospect, but the site itself is in poor condition: a later field wall has eaten into its southeastern edge, and what remains gives only a partial impression of what was once a complete enclosure.
The structure's fabric, where it survives, reveals something of its original construction. The enclosing wall, roughly 2.15 metres wide, was built with a core of radially laid stone slabs faced on both sides with upright slabs set on edge. The eastern entrance is narrow and deliberate, just 1.1 metres wide and 2.2 metres long, defined by three portal stones, two of which form the southern side of the passage. Inside, the western half of the interior is slightly raised, and the northwestern quadrant contains a scatter of upright slabs. Local tradition holds that this area served as a ceallúnach, an informal or unconsecrated burial ground typically used for unbaptised infants or others excluded from churchyard burial. Such places are found across Ireland, often on the margins of older enclosures, and carry a particular weight in the landscape of rural memory. The internal diameter of the enclosure runs to around 19 metres north to south and just over 20 metres east to west, making it a reasonably substantial site despite its neglected state.
Because the site is absent from OS mapping and has been partly obscured by later agricultural boundaries, it is easy to pass without noticing. The upright slabs in the northwest interior are the feature most worth looking for, since they hint at the site's later and perhaps most poignant function, layered over whatever domestic or agricultural purpose the caher originally served.