Ringfort (Cashel), Tooreen, Co. Galway

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Tooreen, Co. Galway

On a low hillock amid partially reclaimed rock outcrop near Tooreen in County Galway, the remains of an early medieval cashel sit in a state of considerable collapse, yet still manage to communicate something of their original ambition.

A cashel is simply a stone-walled ringfort, the western Irish equivalent of the earthen raths found more commonly in other parts of the country, and this one was once defined by not one but two concentric drystone walls enclosing a roughly circular space about 26 metres across. Between those walls ran a wide berm, a flat ledge of ground some four metres across, which would have given the whole structure an imposing layered appearance when the masonry was intact.

Today, both walls are largely reduced to a spread of tumbled stone. The inner wall, originally around 1.45 metres wide and standing perhaps 1.2 metres on its outer face, retains very little of its original facing-stonework, and the outer wall is in a similar condition. What does survive in more coherent form is a stone-lined gap on the east-south-east side of the enclosure, roughly 1.7 metres wide, which appears to be the original entrance. An ancient trackway skirts the monument at the same side, suggesting this approach has been in use for a very long time. To the south, two rectangular fields measuring approximately 35 by 15 metres each may once have functioned as enclosures or paddocks associated with whoever occupied the cashel, a reminder that these structures were farming settlements as much as they were defensive enclosures.

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