Dún Aonghasa
Dun Aengus
Interesting facts
- Excavations led by Claire Cotter between 1992 and 1995 found the remains of round huts from the fort's first Bronze Age settlement.
- The fort's metalworkers left behind one of the largest collections of late Bronze Age clay casting moulds ever recorded in Ireland or Britain.
- Moulds found at the site show the residents cast swords, spearheads, knives, axes, pins and bracelets on the clifftop.
- In 1839 a bronze brooch of the early Iron Age, a fibula with a bird's-head design, was found tucked inside one of the walls.
- Only a handful of Irish stone forts have a chevaux-de-frise, a band of upright stone spikes that slowed attackers on foot.
- The fort's walls enclose an area of roughly six hectares.
- The site was refortified again around AD 800, almost two thousand years after its first walls went up.
- It is listed as National Monument number 23 of Ireland.
Why it is worth it
Dún Aonghasa sits on the very lip of the Atlantic, on the southern cliffs of Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands. The cliff below it drops close to ninety metres straight into the ocean, and the fort's innermost enclosure is a semicircle that simply stops at the edge, as if the sea had taken the rest. That is probably what happened: the original plan was most likely oval or D-shaped, and part of the fort has since fallen with the rock beneath it. Few prehistoric monuments anywhere are staged so dramatically.
The site is far older than its medieval-sounding name suggests. Excavation traced the first enclosure to around 1100 BC, when rubble was heaped against large upright slabs; moulds for casting bronze and traces of habitation date from late in the Bronze Age, and the outer lines of wall were added in later centuries, with further reinforcement in the early medieval period. The name means the fort of Aonghas, and tradition links it either to the pre-Christian god of that name or to a legendary chief of the Fir Bolg. It is one of several stone forts on the islands and a national monument in state care.
What makes the walk up worthwhile is the layering of defences. Four dry-stone walls of the island's pale, square-breaking limestone ring the summit; the innermost is more than five metres thick at its base and stands some six metres high, with wall-walks, chambers and stairs set into it. The rebuilt parts are easy to tell from the original work because they are bound with mortar. Outside the third wall lies a belt of jagged upright stones, a chevaux-de-frise set upright or slanting outwards in the cracks of the bedrock, and it is still remarkably intact. In the middle of the inner enclosure rises a rectangular stone platform, and nobody knows what it was for. On a clear day the view from the walls reaches as far as Mount Brandon on the Dingle peninsula, some 120 km away.
Getting there
Inis Mór lies off the coast of County Galway; Galway city is about 50 km away across the water, and Shannon Airport (SNN) is roughly 74 km as the crow flies. Ferries run to Cill Rónáin, the island's harbour, from Ros a' Mhíl in Connemara and also from Doolin in County Clare, and a small air service flies to the island from Indreabhán on the Connemara coast. The fort is about 7 km west of Cill Rónáin: tourist minibuses, hired bicycles and pony-and-trap rides cover that stretch. From the visitor centre a footpath climbs about 1 km over rough natural rock to the fort, so sturdy shoes help; allow an hour or more for the visit.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Dún Aonghasa is the best-known of several prehistoric hill forts on the Aran Islands of County Galway, Ireland. It lies on Inis Mór, at the edge of a 100-metre-high (330 ft) cliff.
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