forts historical around north west coast ennistymon

Shortly after leaving Poulawack, the road joins the Leamaneh-Ballyvaughan road. Less than 1 km north, to the left of this road, is the stone fort of Caherconnell. This is a ring fort, strongly built, and fairly well preserved....

Although ring-forts of earth and stone had their origins in pre-history, possibly in the Bronze Age, this type of enclosed settlement continued in use for a very long time and became very numerous in the early Christian period. Some, indeed, were rebuilt or extended in the Middle Ages as defensible homesteads even though by that time mortared castles and tower-houses dominated the countryside. Cahermacnaghten, 4 miles east-north-east of the spa resort of Lisdoonvarna, was occupied as late...

An exceptionally interesting though sadly defaced cashel, 1 mile north-east of Kilfenora. The ring-wall encloses an oval space 150 feet by 130 feet and survives to a height of 12 feet or so. Although incomplete it shows a fair standard of building work, incorporating unusually large blocks of stone in the construction of its lower courses. An abundance of easily quarried limestone accounts for the remarkable number of stone forts in the Burren (about 500 are known in the area of 100 square mi...

There are three concentric walls, all abutting on to the edge of the cliff, as at Dun Aenghus on the Aran Islands. The innermost wall, which is also the thickest forms an almost complete circle, but the two outer walls (connected with each other by subsidiary walls, like a fan) only form a semicircle. The innermost wall contains three chambers within the wall, and excavation by the Harvard Archaeological Expedition to Ireland in 1934 showed that the roughly circular area it enclosed had a doze...