Stone and sky: the story of Cahergall and Leacanabuaile

Perched on a windswept rise above the patchwork fields of County Kerry, two massive stone rings have watched over the Iveragh Peninsula for over a thousand years. From the deck of a morning flight out of Sydney or Melbourne, the journey stretches across oceans and centuries before a traveller finally sets foot on the grass between the ancient walls of Cahergall and Leacanabuaile. These twin ringforts, known locally as cashels, sit quietly a few kilometres east of Cahersiveen, and they offer one of the most concentrated snapshots of early medieval life anywhere in Ireland.

Both forts lie just off the famed Ring of Kerry touring route, close enough that walkers travelling between Skellig Michael and the MacGillycuddy's Reeks can pause and wonder at what these walls once held. Their tale is part war-chronicle, part homestead, part engineering marvel, and it reaches back to a kingdom governed by Gaelic chieftains long before surnames, parishes, or stone crosses dominated the landscape. The story they tell is also local and ongoing: a community that has rallied around its past, restored the crumbling walls, and now welcomes strangers who travel half the world to stand where their ancestors once did.

Where the stones stand

The two forts sit on opposite sides of a single shallow valley, a brief stroll apart along a country lane that climbs gently from the road. Leacanabuaile occupies the higher ground to the south, a roughly oval enclosure built into the natural slope of a small hill. Cahergall, larger and more circular, lies to the north on flatter terrain, with views stretching across Valentia Island and out toward the Atlantic haze where the Skelligs rise like teeth from the sea. The relationship between the two has long fascinated archaeologists, since their layouts suggest a paired complex rather than one isolated homestead.

Geologically, the Iveragh Peninsula tells a different story from any Australian hill a walker might know. Where the red sandstone ridges of the Flinders Ranges bake under vast skies, or the volcanic cores of the Warrumbungles push through dry scrub, Kerry offers a wet, green tapestry of bog, hedgerow, and wind-bent grass. The stone used for these forts came from the surrounding fields, where the Old Red Sandstone splits neatly into blocks when worked. That same stone had been quarried and stacked across the peninsula for thousands of years before any ringfort builder attempted these particular walls.

Builders of the cashels

The forts most likely rose during the ninth and tenth centuries, when the Iveragh region was ruled by local chieftains loyal to larger dynasties such as the Eoghanacht of Cashel. Their names carry echoes of that older Gaelic world. Cahergall, or Cathair Gael in older spellings, is often translated as the stone fort of the foreigners, though some scholars argue the second syllable refers instead to a personal name. Leacanabuaile combines leac, meaning a flat slab or hillside, with buaile, a cattle fold or milking place, hinting that livestock once grazed close to these defences and that the hill itself was known for its pasture.

The early medieval period in Kerry was no peaceful idyll. Vikings were raiding the western coast, and rival clans squabbled over land and grazing rights. A ringfort was not a palace but a practical refuge, a place to shelter cattle, store tools, and defend a family or small community for a night or a season. Building one required organising neighbours, hauling stone, and coordinating labour in a landscape without wheeled vehicles, draft animals, or iron tools shaped for quarrying. The fact that both Cahergall and Leacanabuaile still stand today is a quiet testament to the engineering sense of those who lifted each block into place.

Walls without mortar

The technique used in these forts is called drystone construction, where each block is fitted against its neighbour without any mortar to bind them. Builders relied instead on gravity, friction, and carefully chosen stones to keep the walls upright. At Cahergall, the outer enclosure rises nearly five metres in places and is several metres thick at the base, sloping inward as it climbs. Inside, the builders left narrow passages, flights of stone steps, and small lintelled doorways that led toward what were once wooden platforms and timber-framed dwellings.

Leacanabuaile shares the same craft but reveals slightly different choices. Its walls are thicker, its shape less perfectly round, and its surviving features include a stone-lined souterrain, an underground passage used for cold storage or escape. Traces of stone foundations for rectangular houses and a small clochan, or corbelled beehive cell, can still be spotted inside the enclosure. The two forts together give visitors a chance to compare techniques carried out by neighbouring builders within only a few centuries of one another, which is rare even in a country as rich in ringforts as Ireland.

Two forts, two stories

Although the ringforts sit close to each other, they were not built at quite the same moment and they served subtly different communities. Cahergall feels more formal: a wide, open interior with terraces of stone steps leading to a parapet walk, and a commanding view across water and pasture. Leacanabuaile, by contrast, hugs its hilltop more tightly, following the contours of the rock and clustering around what appears to have been the principal dwelling site. Walking between them, you get a sense of how communities shaped their defences to fit the ground beneath them.

Differences between the two forts

Cahergall covers roughly 1.5 acres and contains internal stone stairways that climb to a wall-walk.
Leacanabuaile measures about 25 metres across, with a separate outer enclosure known as a bawn that once held livestock.
Leacanabuaile preserves one of the clearest examples of an underground stone-lined chamber in the region.
Cahergall offers panoramic views west toward Valentia Island and, on clear days, the Blasket Islands beyond.

Walking the ancient ground

Visiting the forts is free and unhurried, which is part of their charm. A small lay-by beside a boreen marks the starting point, and a level track crosses bog and pasture to a stile leading into the field around Cahergall. Most visitors allow an hour or two to walk the perimeter, climb the steps where allowed, and make the short climb up to Leacanabuaile before continuing their journey. Birdwatchers often pause here for choughs and meadow pipits, and the area sits comfortably alongside longer walking routes across the Skellig Ring.

Australian travellers tend to find the terrain pleasantly familiar in feel if not in colour. The coastal bog and turf echoes moorland found in Tasmania's highlands near Cradle Mountain, while the cooler, changeable weather can feel closer to a winter's day in the Otways than to anything in the Australian outback. Practical preparation is more useful than any guidebook flourish.

What to carry on a visit

Sturdy waterproof footwear with grippy soles for muddy grass and uneven stone.
A windproof jacket, since the open hilltop leaves little shelter from Atlantic gusts.
A simple packed lunch and water bottle, as no café stands at the gate.
A torch if you wish to peer into the Leacanabuaile souterrain chambers.

Living memory of the peninsula

For the surrounding parish of Cahersiveen, the forts are not ruins but neighbours. Schoolchildren learn their local names, and community groups have organised tidy-ups, archaeological surveys, and the careful replacement of fallen stones back onto the walls. The Heritage Council has worked alongside local farmers to stabilise sections that were slipping into the surrounding fields, and interpretive panels near the entrance now help visitors understand what they are looking at. The Skellig Coast Visitor Centre in the town itself offers maps and short films that link the forts to the wider story of the peninsula.

That broader story reaches even further than these two walls. From Cahergall you can look out to Valentia, where the first transatlantic telegraph cable came ashore in 1866, and onward to the Skelligs themselves, where monks once climbed their own steep steps in search of solitude. The forts do not ask for grand gestures from their visitors. They ask only for steady feet, a quiet voice, and a willingness to imagine a Gaelic chief stepping out over a parapet a thousand years ago, scanning the same horizon with the same wind in his hair.

Step off the Ring of Kerry for an afternoon, follow the boreen to the stile, and stand a moment between these two circles of stone. Plan a half day into your Skellig Coast itinerary, allow time to wander between the rings, and the peninsula will do the rest.