Leacanabuile Stone Fort

This stone fort or cashel was built in the 9th or 10th century and was the protected farmstead of a wealthy landowner. The circular enclosing wall is more than three metres thick and was constructed by building two strong stone wall faces and filling the space between them with smaller stones. The walls are stepped on the inside to allow access to the top and give a view across the countryside.

The fort is entered from the east, away from the prevailing wind. Inside are the remains of a round house, the only one of several to survive, and attached to it is a later square house. Inside the round house, there is an entrance to a souterrain (an underground passage), which leads to an opening in the enclosing wall, while a covered drain leads from the square house to the fort entrance. Two other stone buildings were later built against the wall of the fort.

Excavations inside the fort produced iron knives and the whetstones with which they were sharpened, pins and bone hair-combs, and quern-stones and mill-stones for grinding wheat or barley into flour.

Leacanabuile - from Leaca na Buaile (the slope of the Booley-summer cow pasture)
 

Cahergall Stone Fort

Stone forts, which are found mainly in the west of Ireland, are notoriously difficult to date. Some are thought to be Iron Age (about 500 BC to 400 AD) while many are simply stone versions of the common earthern ring fort which was the typical farmstead of the Early Historic period (about 400 to 1200 AD).

Cahergall is a particularly fine and impressive stone fort with a massive dry-stone wall. There are flights of steps and terraces in the inner face of the wall and the upper parts of these, together with the lintelled entrance, have recently been reconstructed. Within the fort there are the remains of a large circular dry-stone building. It is likely that somebody of importance lived here about 1,000 years ago.

For Booking Information

Brian Morgan
Atlantic Villa, Valentia Island, Co Kerry