What is recorded here

Seven small cahers once dotted Ballycahill, but most vanished or crumbled before Westropp visited in 1901. This surviving ringfort keeps a twenty-metre circular chamber on a low hill, its stone and earth bank still standing though sloes and thorns crowd the interior. It is not a grand fortress, nor a complete palace, but a stubborn local marker: a small ring of human hands set into the Clare landscape, still visible beside reclaimed pasture.

On the NW-facing slope of a low hill and under scrub but surrounded by reclaimed pasture, on the E side of Ballyvaughan valley. Hachured on the 1842 and 1916 eds. of the OS 6-inch map. Westropp (1901, 282) referred to it as one of ‘seven cahers’ in this townland predominantly ‘small and levelled… [and] quite overthrown and crowded with sloe and thorn-bushes’. A circular cashel (int. diam. 20m) defined by a bank/spread of earth and stone (Wth 2.5-4m; H 0.5-0.8m) with no clearly defined entrance. A later fieldwall abuts the cashel at NE and a low bank runs NNE-SE across its interior, E of centre. The base of this bank may be of antiquity. Compiled by: Mary Tunney and Ros Ó Maoldúin Date of upload: 8 June 2022

A stone ringfort in Ballycahill, likely dating to the early medieval period, is situated on a low hill slope and was recorded on early Ordnance Survey maps. T. J. Westropp noted it in 1901, and though no specific folklore is recorded, its location and form align with traditional sites associated with fairy legend in the region.

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