Ringfort (Cashel), Knocknakilla, Co. Cork

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Knocknakilla, Co. Cork

On a rough grazing hillside in the townland of Knocknakilla, a stone enclosure sits at the edge of a slope break, oriented to look northward along a valley.

It is not especially dramatic to the eye, which is partly what makes it interesting. The roughly circular area, measuring about 26 metres north to south and 28 metres east to west, is bounded by a ruinous stone wall standing less than a metre high and around two metres thick. Somebody, at some later point, added another wall on top of the original, a quiet act of reuse that hints at the site's long afterlife in the landscape.

A cashel is a stone-walled ringfort, the dry-stone equivalent of the earthen raths found more commonly across Ireland, and this one may carry a name with some history attached. A source from 1937, cited by a researcher named Broker, refers to a fort called 'Cathair Bhan' situated in Denis Buckley's farm in this same townland. Whether that name belongs to this enclosure precisely is uncertain, but the identification is plausible. The interior slopes gently down towards the north-east, and large stones protrude from the ground there, particularly in the north-east quadrant, suggesting the structure was once more substantial than what survives today.

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Pete F
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