Ringfort (Cashel), Shanacashel, Co. Kerry

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Shanacashel, Co. Kerry

On the summit of a low rise in Shanacashel, County Kerry, a ring of ancient drystone walling now stands surrounded by plantation pine trees, some of which have taken root inside the enclosure itself.

The site is known locally as Knockangour, or Cnocán na nGabhar in Irish, and it is what archaeologists call a caher, a type of stone-built ringfort constructed without mortar, relying instead on carefully fitted drystone technique to hold its form. This one has not held it especially well.

The enclosure measures roughly 19.3 metres north to south and 23 metres east to west, making it a reasonably substantial structure despite its current condition. Its drystone-faced wall, where it survives, reaches a maximum height of 1.5 metres at the south-west and averages about 1.4 metres wide, figures that hint at something considerably more imposing before time and forestry worked against it. A gap of around 3 metres on the western side is wide enough to suggest it was not simply a breach or collapse, but the original entrance to the enclosure. Field walls extending outward from the caher are a further trace of the agricultural landscape that once organised itself around this spot, a common arrangement in early medieval Ireland when such enclosures served as the fortified farmsteads of local farming families. The plantation that now surrounds and partly fills the site has complicated both its appearance and its preservation, with pine trees growing within the very interior that would once have contained a dwelling.

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Pete F
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