Grianan of Aileach - Morphology

Morphology

The Grianán of Aileach, at its broadest description, is a ringfort. More precisely it is a multivallate cashel hillfort.

A ring fort can be described as a space, usually circular, surrounded by a bank and fosse or simply a rampart of stone. The bank is generally built by piling up inside the fosse the material obtained digging the latter. Ringforts vary considerably in size and style. In more elaborately defended examples, such as Aileach, the defences take up a much greater area than the enclosure itself.

Matthew Stout gives many examples of why the people who built these structures chose a circular formation. First of all, they had strategic advantages. Circular sites allowed for a broad perspective of the surrounding area and allowed the maximum area to be enclosed relative to the bank constructed. He also comes up with some much more metaphysical theories. He suggests that a circular formation linked the site and its occupants with the circular burial mounds of their ancestors. About a third of all Irish hillforts have mounds or cairns within them. The Aileach is no exception. He also puts forward the idea that a circular form was favoured because corners could act as a dwelling-place of evil spirits. He bases these claims on ethnographic comparisons.

Ringforts housed families of varying degrees of wealth, so that some of them are more impressive than others. Ringforts do not normally occupy dominant or commanding positions. The only exception to this are the ringforts built in areas of bad drainage where high places are the only suitable spots for habitation. Raftery names three monuments which he finds hard to categorise as being either a ringfort or a hillfort: Cahirciveen; Carraig Aille; and Lough Gur. While the places where they sit are areas of natural defence, they may have been built there for drainage purposes. The buildings themselves are not militaristic or defensive in themselves. They were probably family homesteads. The defining characteristic of hillforts is an inbuilt defensive nature.

Therefore, hillforts as a subcategory of the ringfort are defined by their location and style of construction. Hillfort consist of ‘large hilltop areas on which the summit is enclosed by one (univallate) or multiple ramparts (multivallate) of earth or stone’. A good example would be Dún Aengus on Inishmore. Its defensive nature is explicit due to the system of stone slabs, known as chevaux de frise, planted into the ground outside the fort structure itself.

The Grianán of Aileach, as described in the introductory section, is encircled by three enclosures and is therefore trivallate. The actual living space of ringforts often forms less than 60% of the total monument area. Contemporary law tracts described a king’s principle dwelling to have been a univallate ringfort. Increasing a site’s defences without a corresponding increase in its functional area demonstrates either a greater need for defence or a display of status. Therefore, a ring fort with two ramparts (bivallate) acts a status symbol. The rarity of trivallate hillforts, such as that at the Grianán, shows the importance and status of its occupants rather a need for defence.

Stout gives several examples to indicate their symbolic importance simply due to their impracticality as defensive structures. In general, they were little more than fences to prevent stock from straying and to protect against wild animals. As siege tools, they were useless. If anything they were built to repel cattle raids.This might not be the case with the Grianán of Aileach

While the original structure for which the ramparts were built does not exist anymore, the cashel of Aileach, while formidable, was probably designed with less of a defensive function in mind but rather it was built as a symbol of royal power. Stone structures appear both eternal and immovable. The cashel was built on this site for the panoramic view rather than for defence. This could be seen as changing the visual emphasis of the ramparts from being defensive terraces to enclosures of royal power and influence.

Hillforts are known throughout western Europe but Irish hillforts were not as well developed and never attained the standard of the so-called Celtic Oppida of Continental Europe and Britain. They vary in size but are of a communal rather than single-family residence. Cashels (stone built ringforts) tend to be much smaller than earthen examples. The average earthen ringfort has an internal diameter of 22 metres in south Donegal; cashels in the same area have an average internal diameter of 20 metres. The Grianán of Aileach, with an average internal diameter of 23.4 metres is larger than the latter and therefore this must be an indication of the wealth and importance of its inhabitants and perhaps it is also an indication of the size of its occupant population. Lacy suggests that the innovative nature of the stone fort of Aileach must have been an unusual site when it was first constructed. The names Garvan, Frigru/ Rigriu are found in many Irish authorities to be the names of the builders of Aileach. These characters are linked to the Formorians and therefore may be nothing more than mythological creations. Lacy believes that the builder may have been Áed Oirdnide, the victor at the battle of Cloíteach.