Structure, Cahermaan, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Utility Structures
At Cahermaan in County Clare, tucked against the inner face of a rectangular cashel's western wall, a small structure survives in a state that rewards careful looking.
Its northern and eastern sides are visible only as grassed-over wall footings and a spread of stone; the southern side has vanished entirely from the surface. The cashel wall itself, a cashel being a stone-built ringfort typical of early medieval Ireland, does double duty as the structure's western boundary. The interior measures roughly four metres north to south and just under four metres east to west, making it a compact space, little larger than a modest room.
The structure sits in relation to a house site located centrally within the cashel's interior, suggesting that whoever used this enclosure organised it with some deliberation, placing domestic or functional spaces around the interior rather than leaving it open. The rectangular form of the cashel is itself notable; most cashels in Ireland are roughly circular or oval, so a rectangular plan points to something slightly outside the norm, though the notes do not speculate further on date or purpose. What remains is a palimpsest of low stonework, its original function unrecorded, its walls reduced to little more than suggestions in the grass.