Ringfort (Cashel), Cloghboley, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Ringforts
A cashel is a ringfort built from stone rather than earth and timber, and the one sitting on a ridge at Cloghboley in County Sligo is quietly peculiar for what it lacks as much as for what it contains.
There is no fosse, the external ditch that typically rings earthen enclosures, and no clearly identifiable entrance through the wall. Most ringforts announce their threshold; this one keeps it hidden, folded into the structure somewhere unrecorded, or simply lost to the accumulation of time and collapse.
The enclosure is roughly circular, with an internal diameter of around 26 metres, its perimeter wall built from stone with an earthen fill, a construction method that gave cashels considerable bulk and permanence. Inside, the ground is far from flat. A depression near the south-east measures about four metres long and two metres wide, and along the northern interior a low mound runs parallel to the wall for nearly six metres. These humps and hollows are the kind of features that often signal earlier structures, collapsed buildings, or ground disturbed by centuries of use and reuse. More compelling still is the entrance to a souterrain in the north-west section of the wall. A souterrain is an underground passage or chamber, usually stone-lined, associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland and thought to have served for storage, refuge, or both. That a separate record exists for this souterrain suggests it survives in enough detail to be catalogued independently, though exactly what lies beneath the Cloghboley ridge remains a matter for excavation rather than surface observation.
The cashel occupies good pasture on a ridge with open views in several directions, the kind of position that early medieval farming communities chose deliberately, combining defensibility with the ability to watch over surrounding land. The interior mounds and depressions reward a careful look, and the north-west wall is worth examining for the souterrain entrance, though the ground underfoot may be uneven across the raised interior.