Description

Irish history.

Most famous of the great circular stone cashels, Staigue is also one of the best preserved and conveys a fair idea of how the larger Iron Age fortifications must have looked in their day. A building combining exceptional strength with unexpected architectural flair, it was plainly more than a vernacular ring-fort. It invites comparison with the Grianan of Aileach in Donegal, with which it shares certain features, and like it may have been a royal residence in the last pre-Christian centuries. Its secluded situation, ringed by a ridge of hills at the head of a narrow valley with a view south to the coast, is very beautiful.

The cashel wall is notable for its uniformity and there are many interesting features for you to see. The most intriguing thing about the fort is that there are ten flights of steps, built in an X shape, along the circular internal wall gives access to the top of the rampart. There are two small rooms, one on the west side of the fort, the other on the south. The stones are skilfully laid, without mortar; the wall, 13 feet thick at the base, rises with a pronounced batter to a maximum height of 18 feet. The south-facing entrance is a 6 feet high passage roofed with massive lintels, the jambs typically converging in the Irish manner. A fosse and ring-bank surround the cashel, adding to its considerable defences.

The technique of dry-walling so well demonstrated here has a long tradition, being found in Neolithic chamber tombs of 5,000 years ago. The survival of so many early structures throughout the Irish countryside is partly due to the mastery of the craft of interlocking stones to achieve total stability, even in large building works like Staigue. The tradition is carried on today on a lesser scale, in the building and maintenance of mile upon mile of field-walls in the rural west.