Ringfort (Cashel), Poulacapple, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ringforts
On the eastern side of the Caher valley in County Clare, a collapsed stone enclosure sits in rough pasture near the northern edge of a ridge, its walls now reduced to little more than rubble and scattered facing stones.
What makes this cashel, a type of stone-walled ringfort, quietly compelling is not any single dramatic feature but the accumulation of layers pressed into a small area of ground. Two circular hut sites survive within the interior, a later field wall has been built along the inner edge of the original enclosure, and aerial imagery from 2021 revealed the base of yet another wall running westward off the cashel, which may belong to the same period of occupation or may predate it entirely.
The cashel itself is subcircular in plan, measuring roughly 24 metres east to west and 18 metres north to south internally, with a collapsed stone wall between 1.2 and 1.6 metres wide. The outer facing, where it remains visible, stands no higher than half a metre in places. A natural gap of about two metres between two sheets of rock to the north-north-east is thought to mark the original entrance, the kind of opportunistic use of the landscape that is characteristic of early medieval enclosures across the west of Ireland. Cashels of this type were typically built and occupied from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, serving as farmsteads for individual family groups. This one sits within a multiperiod field system, meaning the landscape around it preserves evidence of agricultural organisation from more than one distinct phase of use, with boundaries and enclosures from different eras overlapping and sometimes reusing one another. Approximately 90 metres to the north, a large stone cairn adds another element to the picture, suggesting the ridge was a significant place well before any farmer enclosed it with a cashel wall.