Ringfort (Cashel), Dromdeegy, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Dromdeegy, Co. Cork

On a west-facing hillside in Dromdeegy, County Cork, a stone ringfort sits just below the crest of a hill, its circular bank still rising to 1.4 metres in places, quietly doing what it has done for well over a thousand years.

The interior, however, has been put to rather more prosaic modern use: generations of farmers have treated it as a convenient repository for field clearance debris, the stones and rubble of agricultural tidying piling up inside what was once a defined domestic enclosure. That kind of repurposing is not unusual for ringforts across Ireland, but it does give the place a layered quality, centuries of early medieval life followed by centuries of being quietly filled in.

A cashel is the stone-built equivalent of the more common earthen ringfort, a roughly circular enclosure defined by a substantial drystone wall rather than a raised earthen bank, and typically associated with early medieval farming families, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. At Dromdeegy, the enclosure measures approximately 31 metres north to south and 32 metres east to west, making it a moderately sized example. The western side of the bank is particularly notable for a line of contiguous orthostats, that is, upright standing stones set along the centre line of the bank, suggesting deliberate structural reinforcement or perhaps an earlier phase of construction. In the south-western quadrant of the interior sits a small circular hut site, about five metres in diameter, defined by its own low stone bank. This would have been a domestic structure, perhaps a sleeping space or working shelter, within the broader protected enclosure.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Ringfort (Cashel), Dromdeegy, Co. Cork. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement