Cairn, Noughaval, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Cairns

Cairn, Noughaval, Co. Clare

A broad, flat-topped mound of stone sitting on the exposed karst limestone of the Burren is not, on first encounter, an obvious puzzle.

But this large subcircular cairn near Noughaval rewards closer attention. It measures roughly 17.8 metres north to south at its base and rises to between 2.2 and 2.4 metres in height, yet its summit is unusually flat, only about 4.4 metres across at its widest point. The flatness is one oddity; another is what sits on top: moss-covered stones that appear to have been placed there comparatively recently, long after whatever original purpose the cairn served.

A cairn of this kind is essentially a mound of gathered stones, sometimes prehistoric in origin and sometimes marking a burial, a boundary, or simply the clearance of agricultural land over generations. This one appears in the Ordnance Survey 25-inch plan of 1897 and again in the 1920 edition of the 6-inch map, both times labelled simply "Carn", which suggests it was a recognised landmark but not one whose function was recorded with any particular care. It sits within a large multiperiod field system, meaning the surrounding landscape was worked and reworked across several different eras, and the cairn itself seems to have played a role in organising that space: broad, low, grass-covered ridges extend from it to the northwest and east-southeast, and these appear to be remnants of old field boundaries. Intermittent kerbstones are still visible around the base, particularly on the western arc from southwest to northwest. A shallow ravine lies about 40 metres to the west, a second cairn sits roughly 62 metres to the northeast, and the footprints of two hut sites are close by to the north and north-northeast, together suggesting this was once a busy, inhabited corner of the limestone plain rather than an isolated monument.

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