A Walk around Múchán Hillfort

A walk around Múchán / Mooghaun hillfort doesn’t immediately take your breath away. It’s quite unassuming.

It’s a gentle hill (easy to say after driving there) covered by woodland, in the heart of County Clare.

I have old memories of picnicking there and running around the trees. I also remember sitting on top of the triangulation pillar that used to stand at the peak of the hill.

The layers of prehistory and history reveal themselves slowly at Múchán.

The question lingers for me: did the people who built this speak a direct ancestor of the Irish language?

So what’s at Múchán? As you walk there, you’ll notice a low stone wall that you walk through. This is actually one of the three ramparts (protective stone structures) that circle the hill.

I’ve wondered what múchán means. The translation given is a soot shed or an old ruined shed. I don’t know if this is a more recent name, or whether it refers back to the existence on the hill in prehistory of metal works that were there.

The total length of the stone ramparts is 2.1 kilometres (Grogan, 1999, p. 18). It’s hard to imagine how much stone it would have taken to make these walls made of a continuous mound of stone. The estimate is that 500,000 tonnes of stone was used.

This structure was built looong ago, in the Late Bronze Age, around 950 BC. It hints at the societal structure that was needed to get many people involved over a number of years to build it.

There are a couple of smaller cashels inside. These are smaller enclosures, constructed from stone taken from the original ramparts. These were built some 1,500 years after the original stone structures – an amazing breadth of time.

The riches of the people who had this built is really beyond imagination. In 1854 the nearby Limerick-Ennis railroad was being constructed. A gold hoard was found (the Mooghaun Gold Hoard), much of which was smelted and sold at the time. However some items still remain. The National Museum of Ireland has them on permanent display.

You can search for more archaeological facts about Múchán. I encourage you to explore with your imagination how Múchán maybe once was, and to linger on the question of how your Irish language journey is connected in unknown ways to something ancient.

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References:

• Grogan, E. (1999) Mooghaun: The Late Bronze Age Hillfort at Mooghaun South, The Discovery Programme.
• Bitesize Irish video: Did the people of Múchán speak Irish?

Photos copyright Eoin Ó Conchúir.