
What is recorded here
Indicated is a small stone ringfort on a narrow terrace above Galway Bay, marked on maps since 1842 and still holding a circle of ancient wall beside later field boundaries. Westropp called it late and small, yet the site remains vivid in its setting, perched at the foot of a rocky slope with wild flowers and blackthorn inside. It is the kind of place where human hands shaped a little world at the edge of the sea, then stepped back and let the coast take it over.
On the leading, N-edge of a narrow, level terrace at the N foot of a steeply rising, rocky slope overlooking a narrow coastal pasture strip with Galway Bay beyond to N. Hachured on the first edition (1842) of the OS 6-inch map and indicated on the later Cassini edition (1915). Described by Westropp (1901, 11) as ‘a small and, I think, a late “ring”’, but subsequently described by him as ‘the trace of a small ring-fort’ which ‘lies in the uppermost enclosed fields below Caherduff’ (Westropp 1905, 352).
A circular area (int. diams. 19m E-W; 18m N-S) is enclosed by a later drystone wall but some original outer wall facing stones are visible on the perimeter at NW. The interior, which is covered with wild flowers and partially overgrown with blackthorn in the NW sector, contains is a natural rock ledge in the S sector. Field walls abut the site at ENE, WSW and NW.
References
Westropp, T.J. 1901 Prehistoric remains in north-western Clare, part 1. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 31, 1-17.
Westropp, T.J. 1905 Prehistoric remains (forts and dolmens) along the borders of Burren, in the County of Clare (Continued). Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 35, 342-61.
Compiled by: Gearoid Conroy and Lynda McCormack
Date of upload: 21 October 2022
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- What survives
- Recorded monument
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