Ringfort (Cashel), Cahermaculick, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
At Cahermaculick in County Mayo, a roughly circular enclosure sits in recently cleared pasture, its ancient wall now reduced to little more than a low, peat-covered ridge.
The structure is a cashel, a type of ringfort built from dry-stone rather than earthen banks, and this one measures approximately 31 metres north to south and 35 metres east to west. That a modern stone field fence cuts straight across its western side gives some sense of how thoroughly the working landscape has grown around and through it over the centuries.
A cashel of this kind would typically have served as a defended farmstead during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, when thousands of such enclosures were built across Ireland. The wall here survives to a height of only 0.4 metres, weighed down and obscured by accumulated peat, and clearance boulders, stones removed from the surrounding land during agricultural work, have been dumped both inside the enclosure and on what remains of the wall itself. In the south-eastern portion of the interior, there is a possible souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that in other ringforts typically served for storage or as a place of refuge. Its presence, even as an unconfirmed feature, hints that this was once a more substantial and purposefully built settlement than its current condition suggests.