Ringfort (Cashel), Maryville, Co. Clare

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Ringfort (Cashel), Maryville, Co. Clare

In a pasture field near Maryville in County Clare, a low circular bank barely announces itself above the grass.

The rise is slight, in places only ten centimetres above the interior ground level, and there is no ditch, no obvious entrance, no dramatic earthwork to catch the eye. What it may be, however, is a cashel, a type of early medieval enclosure defined not by an earthen bank but by a stone wall, and here the tell is in the detail: facing-stones are still visible at the northern and southern arcs, hinting at a structure that was once more deliberately built than the grass-covered mound now suggests.

The enclosure measures roughly 22 metres north to south and just under 19 metres east to west internally, with the defining bank varying in width between one and four metres. Within the eastern half of the interior sits a roughly triangular mound, about eleven metres long and less than half a metre high, widening as it runs from north to south. Its purpose is not certain, but its presence inside the enclosure adds another layer of complexity to what might otherwise be dismissed as a slight irregularity in the field. The site sits within an extensive multiperiod field system, meaning the landscape around it carries its own long accumulation of boundaries, banks, and enclosures laid down across different eras. A possible second enclosure lies roughly 44 metres to the north-north-west, raising the question of whether this was once part of a broader organised settlement rather than a solitary structure.

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Pete F
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