Ringfort, Knockdoemore, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
At Knockdoemore in County Galway, a field boundary runs straight through what was once a substantial circular enclosure, bisecting it without ceremony.
That boundary is, in its own way, the most telling feature of what remains here, because the monument it cuts through has largely disappeared beneath the grass. The enclosure in question is a cashel, a type of ringfort built from dry-stone walling rather than earthen banks, and this one measured roughly 47 metres in diameter, which would have made it a fairly considerable structure in its day. Very little of it is now legible on the ground.
The wall has collapsed and grassed over along most of its circuit, and to the north-east of the field boundary that bisects the site, no surface trace survives at all. What does remain is visible on the south-facing slope as a low, indistinct rise in the grassland, the kind of subtle undulation that is easy to walk past without registering its origin. Cashels of this type were typically built during the early medieval period in Ireland, serving as enclosed farmsteads or the defended residences of local farming families and minor lords. They are common across the west of Ireland, though the drystone construction characteristic of areas where building stone is plentiful makes Galway examples particularly numerous. The precise history of this one, including who built it and when it was abandoned, is not recorded.