Less remarked upon is the presence of a cashel in the townland below, a structure of a quite different period and character. A cashel is a type of ringfort built from dry-stone walling rather than earthen banks, and where earthwork ringforts are scattered in their thousands across Ireland, cashels tend to cluster in areas where stone was more readily available than turf or subsoil deep enough to bank up.

Ringforts of both kinds were typically built and occupied during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and served as enclosed farmsteads for a family of some local standing. The circular or oval wall defined a domestic space, offered some protection for livestock, and marked out social territory as much as it provided any serious military defence. A cashel in this particular landscape, so close to a prehistoric ceremonial site of the significance of Carrowkeel, raises quiet questions about continuity of use and memory across millennia, though any direct connection would be speculative. The Bricklieve uplands have a long history of human activity, and the presence of an early medieval enclosure in the same townland as one of Ireland's most remarkable passage tomb complexes is, at the very least, a layering worth pausing over.