Cahercommaun
Cathair Chomáin, a triple stone ringfort on the south-east edge of the Burren near Carran, built in the 9th century.
More than forty thousand of them have been identified in the Irish countryside, which makes the ringfort the commonest ancient monument in the country by a distance — and the one most likely to be in a field near you.
A ringfort is not a fort in the castle sense. It is a farmstead: a circular enclosure with a bank and ditch, or a stone wall, thrown around a house, its outbuildings and its animals. They were built from the Bronze Age through the Iron Age and into the early Middle Ages, up to about the year 1000. They are found in northern Europe generally, but nowhere near as thickly as in Ireland, and the ones in south Wales and Cornwall go by another name, rounds.
Two words matter. A ráth is the earthen kind, a bank of soil with the ditch it came out of, and it is much the commoner: Lisnagade in County Down is one of the big ones. A caiseal, anglicised cashel, is the same idea in drystone, which is what you get where the soil is thin and the rock is at the surface — which is why Kerry and the Burren in Clare have the finest of them, Staigue, Cahergall, Caherconnell and Cahercommaun among them.
Then there are the ones that are not ringforts at all, though they get called forts: Dún Aonghasa on Inis Mór, a run of walls along a cliff top with a field of jagged stones set upright outside to break a charge; Dunbeg on the Dingle peninsula, a headland cut off by banks; the Grianán of Aileach on its mountain, whose visible walls are a 19th-century rebuild. They are on this page because people look for them here, and each entry says what it actually is.
The reason so many survive is not archaeology. It is that they were believed to belong to the fairies, and that interfering with one brought ruin. Farmers ploughed around them for centuries. It is the most effective heritage protection Ireland ever had, and it was never written down in any law.
Sources: Wikipedia — Ringfort ↗ · Wikipedia — Fairy fort ↗
Cathair Chomáin, a triple stone ringfort on the south-east edge of the Burren near Carran, built in the 9th century.
Cathair Chonaill, Conall's stone ringfort: an exceptionally well-preserved medieval cashel in the Burren, about a kilometre south of the Poulnabrone dolmen.
Cathair Mhic Neachtain, a ringfort in the Burren south of Ballyvaughan. It, or a building beside it, was the site of the O'Davoran law school, where brehon law was taught.
A hillfort on Greenan Mountain above the Inishowen peninsula. The stone ringfort at its centre is thought to have been built by the Northern Uí Néill; what stands today is largely a 19th-century reconstruction, which the site itself does not hide.
Lios na gCéad, the ringfort of the hundred: a large multivallate earthen ringfort three miles west of Banbridge, and a State Care Historic Monument. Earthen forts like this one are the commonest kind by far.
The best known of several prehistoric forts on the Aran Islands, on Inis Mór at the edge of a cliff 100 metres above the Atlantic. Not a ringfort: a series of walls against the cliff edge, with a band of jagged stones set upright outside them.
The black fort, a large stone fort on the cliffs at Killeany on Inis Mór. Erosion has left it on a promontory reaching into the sea.
A stone ringfort, a cashel, and a National Monument near Cahersiveen in County Kerry, with Leacanabuaile a few hundred metres away.
An Dún Beag, an Iron Age promontory fort near Ventry on the Dingle peninsula: not a ring but a headland cut off by banks and ditches, with the sea doing the rest of the work.
A stone ringfort and National Monument immediately north-west of Cahergall, about 3 km from Cahersiveen.
A stone ringfort and National Monument on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry.
A ruined stone ringfort west of Sneem on the Iveragh peninsula, thought to have been built in the late Iron Age, perhaps about 100 BC, as the stronghold of a local lord or king. It stands at the head of a valley opening south to the sea, ringed by a ditch over 8 metres wide.
A stone ringfort and National Monument in County Mayo.
Also called Clogher Stone Fort: a stone ringfort and National Monument in County Sligo.
Also called Cashel Bir or Bawnboy: a stone ringfort and National Monument in County Sligo.
Descriptions are Wikipedia's own opening lines, used under CC BY-SA 4.0 with a link to each article; the list and the coordinates come from the same place. Nothing here is a guide to access — many of these stand on private land.
A circular farmstead enclosed by an earthen bank and ditch, or by a stone wall — not a military fort but a family's house, outbuildings and livestock behind a boundary. They were built from the Bronze Age up to about AD 1000, and Ireland has far more of them than anywhere else.
Over 40,000 sites have been identified across the island, and at least 50,000 are thought to have existed; the State's Sites and Monuments Record lists over 31,000 in the Republic alone. This page maps the 15 with a documented article and a location; the rest are in fields, under gorse, and on the Ordnance Survey maps as raths and cashels.
The material. A ráth is built of earth, a bank with a ditch outside it, and is the commoner kind. A caiseal or cashel is built of drystone, and is found where the rock is near the surface — Kerry, the Burren and the west generally.
Because people believed the aos sí, the people of the mounds, lived in them, and that damaging one brought bad luck. That belief is why so many are still standing in the middle of worked farmland, and it is still strong enough to make the news.
Staigue and Cahergall in Kerry, Caherconnell in the Burren and the Grianán of Aileach in Donegal are the best known and the easiest to reach. All 15 here are mapped by their documented coordinates.
Know one that is missing? Thousands of ringforts & stone forts have no article and no pin — a townland name and a rough location is enough to start.
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