What is recorded here

Fairy forts in Clare are called that because people stopped believing they were human made. This one in Ballyinsheen More still shows two rounded stone walls and five thin walls running between them like spokes in a wheel. It sits on a low rise beside open pasture and a modern quarry, large enough that its shape can still be read from above. The name may hide an ordinary place, but the stones preserve the fact that someone built a bounded space there long before the fields crossed it.

On a low rise in undulating pastureland and outcropping karstic limestone, within an extensive multiperiod field system (CL009-001001-). A large modern quarry lies c. 48m to the NNW. This subcircular bivallate cashel is defined by two concentric double-faced limestone walls and at least five intervening radial walls. The inner wall (int. dims. 36m N-S; 31m E-W; Wth 2.6-3m; int. H 0.6-1m; ext. H 0.1-1m) best preserved from SW-WNW, where several courses of the randomly coursed wall survive intact. Along the circumference, several large upright slabs, aligned perpendicular to the revetting, are visible within the rubble core of the wall. Two such slabs, 4.1m apart at E, with a low mound between them, may mark the entrance gap flanked by two jambstones. The outer wall (int. dims. 68m E-W; 67m N-S; Wth 2.2-2.6m; int. H 0.4-1m; ext. H 0.3-1.5m) is best preserved at SW. Traces of the inner and outer revetments are visible intermittently. At least five radial walls (Wth 2m; H 0.5m) are visible in the area between the two walls from S to NE. A modern sheepfold at N may overlie another one. Later field walls, two running ENE-WSW, cross the cashel walls at NE and SE, while a third one, running NNW-SSW, also crosses the outer wall at SE. The following images have been uploaded: CL008-045011-_01.jpg - Aerial view from SSE CL008-045011-_02.jpg - Aerial view from SSW CL008-045011-_03.jpg - Inner wall CL008-045011-_04.jpg - Outer wall and radial wall CL008-045011-_05.jpg - Radial wall at S CL008-045011-_06.jpg - Aerial view from N Compiled by: Olive Alcock and Conn Herriott Date of upload: 17 October 2022

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