Ringfort (Cashel), Derrylehan, Co. Sligo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Derrylehan, Co. Sligo

In a field of gently rolling pasture in Derrylehan, County Sligo, a roughly circular enclosure sits slightly raised above the surrounding ground, its limestone walls quietly announcing that something deliberate was built here a very long time ago.

This is a cashel, a type of ringfort defined by its dry-stone construction rather than the earthen banks and ditches more commonly associated with the form. Cashels are found across Ireland and are generally dated to the early medieval period, roughly the sixth to twelfth centuries, functioning as enclosed farmsteads for a single family and their livestock.

The enclosure measures thirty-two metres in diameter and is bounded by a wall of un-coursed rubble limestone, meaning the stones were laid without the regular horizontal rows that characterise more carefully built masonry. The wall stands to about one and a half metres in height and is roughly eighty centimetres thick. However, not all of what is visible today is original. The section running from east to south-west appears to have been reconstructed in relatively recent times, while the arc from south-west back around to the east retains only its footings, the lowest surviving courses of the original cashel wall. Where the entrance once stood is no longer identifiable; if a formal gateway existed, it has been lost either to time or to the reconstruction work.

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Pete F
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