Ringfort (Cashel), Kilbride, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
What makes this particular enclosure in Kilbride quietly puzzling is not its size or its state of ruin, but a single anomaly: the interior is substantially raised, which is unusual for a cashel.
A cashel is a stone-walled ringfort, the western Irish equivalent of the earthen rath, typically enclosing a more or less level domestic area behind a defensive perimeter. Here, the broadly oval interior, roughly 37 metres east to west and 42 metres north to south, sits noticeably higher than one might expect, and it remains difficult to say how much of what survives reflects the original build and how much is the result of later modification over the centuries.
The enclosing wall, where intact, is well-constructed from medium and large stone blocks and still stands between 1.5 and 2 metres high on much of the circuit, though a section to the south-south-east is lower and more roughly built, and a stretch of about 6 metres on the western side has collapsed outward entirely. A wide, sod-covered berm or terrace runs along the base of the outer wall face, possibly the remnant of a spread of tumbled stone gradually absorbed into the ground. Inside, the wall has largely fallen inward into a broad rubble tumble, more pronounced to the west, and a meandering heap of stones crosses the western half of the interior on a rough south-to-north-west line, partly buried under overgrowth. More striking still is the presence of a collapsed souterrain, an underground passage or chamber of a type often associated with early medieval settlement, extending through a slightly raised rectangular area in the south-east quadrant. Two gaps in the wall may mark original entrances, though one to the south-west has been blocked at some point by later stonework. A rath, an earthen ringfort, sits just 70 metres to the north-north-east, making this a small but notable cluster of early enclosures in an otherwise low-lying stretch of Mayo grassland, with a small lake visible to the north and a ridge of higher ground beyond it.
The interior today is largely given over to a dense thicket of blackthorn and hazel, with hawthorn ringing the perimeter, and a field boundary cuts across the whole on a roughly north-to-south axis, the townland boundary itself running along part of the enclosing wall. The vegetation makes a close reading of the interior difficult, and the stone features inside are only partly visible through the overgrowth.