Ringfort (Cashel), Leana, Co. Clare

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Leana, Co. Clare

In the dense woodland of Leana, on a south-southwest-facing slope in County Clare, a scatter of jumbled stones traces the ghost of an early medieval enclosure.

It takes some concentration to read the landscape correctly: what looks at first like a random tumble of large and small stones is, in fact, the remains of a cashel, a type of ringfort defined by a dry-stone circular wall rather than an earthen bank. The structure is poorly preserved, but its outline can still be followed if you know what you are looking for.

The enclosing bank survives to roughly 3.5 metres in width and between one and one and a half metres in height, though the stonework is thoroughly collapsed and disordered. What is geometrically curious about this particular cashel is the inconsistency of its plan: the southern arc follows a curved line, as one would expect from a circular enclosure, while the stretch from north to east runs straight. This irregularity may reflect later disturbance, partial collapse and spread, or something in the original design influenced by the slope and the terrain. The site was recorded as an Enclosure in the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996, a classification that sometimes reflects uncertainty about the precise nature or date of a feature where surface evidence alone cannot settle the question.

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Pete F
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