Ringfort (Cashel), Carrowmore, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
At Carrowmore in County Mayo, a cashel sits in the landscape doing what cashels have done for well over a thousand years: very little, and yet somehow quite a lot.
A cashel is a ringfort built from stone rather than earth, the dry-stone walling taking the place of the raised banks and ditches more commonly associated with the form. Ringforts of both kinds were the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically housing a single family and their animals, and they survive in their thousands across the country. This one, designated simply by its townland and type, is among the quieter entries in the national record.
Carrowmore is a townland name derived from the Irish An Cheathrú Mhór, meaning the big quarter, a reference to an old unit of land division rather than any particular settlement. Mayo itself is one of the more archaeologically layered counties in the west, its landscape scattered with the remains of pre-Norman habitation that range from megalithic tombs to souterrains, the latter being underground stone-lined passages associated with early medieval settlement. The cashel at Carrowmore fits into this broader pattern of enclosed rural life, though beyond its classification and location, the specific details of its history, its dimensions, and its present condition remain unrecorded in publicly available sources.