Ringfort (Cashel), Castlecrunnoge, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Castlecrunnoge, Co. Mayo

On a low hill in Castlecrunnoge, County Mayo, a small stone enclosure sits in good pasture, its circular outline quietly persisting in the landscape while the bog and damp ground to the north-west and east have been gradually swallowed by forestry.

This is a cashel, a type of ringfort enclosed not by earthen banks but by a drystone wall, the kind of structure that early medieval Irish farming families built as a defended homestead or farmstead enclosure. What makes this one quietly puzzling is how thoroughly it has been absorbed into the working landscape: the wall on the western arc now functions as a property boundary, and the stonework is so similar in scale and construction to the surrounding field walls that the eye can easily pass over it.

The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring just under nineteen metres across, with a drystone wall between one and 1.2 metres wide and standing roughly a metre high on both faces. It is narrowly and roughly built of medium to large stones, without the careful coursing of more elaborate cashels elsewhere in the country. Along the eastern and southern arc, the outer face of the wall, which drops to around 0.6 metres, sits on top of a broad, sod-covered scarp about a metre high, suggesting the ground was shaped or built up to give the structure more presence on its hilltop. There is a break in the wall at the south-east, but whether this represents an original entrance or simply a later gap is uncertain. Inside, the ground is scattered with boulders. In the south-west quadrant there is a more deliberate arrangement: a rough ring of stones, two metres in diameter, enclosing a central pit or depression about a metre across and 0.4 metres deep. What this feature was for remains unknown; it may be structural, agricultural, or something else entirely.

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Pete F
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