Ringfort (Cashel), Loughanelteen, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Ringforts
On the floor of a narrow north-south valley at Loughanelteen, a ring of dry-laid limestone rubble traces out a circle roughly 24 metres across.
What makes the site quietly arresting is not its condition, which is partial at best, but its type: this is a cashel, a form of ringfort built entirely from stone rather than earthen banks and ditches. Where a typical ringfort relies on a raised rampart and an outer fosse, or trench, for its enclosure, a cashel substitutes a mortarless wall, here about a metre wide and standing to a metre in height where it survives at all.
The wall holds its line from the west-southwest around to the south-southeast, though sections at the northwest, north-northwest, and east have collapsed into rubble. On the opposite arc, from south-southeast to west-southwest, even the standing courses are gone and only the footings remain flush with the ground. There is no visible fosse at any point around the perimeter, which is consistent with the cashel form. A separate drystone field wall, oriented north-northwest to south-southeast, meets the cashel wall at the south-southeast, suggesting the enclosure was at some point drawn into a later pattern of agricultural land division, though whether that connection is ancient or relatively recent is not clear from what survives. The original entrance has not been identified; any gap that once served as a formal threshold has been obscured either by collapse or by later alterations to the wall line.