Ringfort (Cashel), Ballynamona, Co. Sligo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Ballynamona, Co. Sligo

On the level summit of a ridge in County Sligo, a circular earthwork sits quietly in pasture, its outline still legible after perhaps fifteen centuries of slow erosion.

This is a cashel, a type of ringfort defined by its use of earth and stone rather than timber, and the raised interior platform, roughly 28 metres across, would once have enclosed a farmstead, its bank marking the boundary between a family's domestic world and the open countryside beyond.

The site retains enough of its structure to reveal how it was built and used. The main bank, nearly five metres wide at its base, is accompanied on its outer edge by a fosse, a defensive ditch about three and a half metres across, and beyond that a second, lower bank. This double-bank arrangement suggests the enclosure was designed with some care, perhaps indicating a household of modest means but reasonable local standing in early medieval Ireland, when such sites were typically occupied between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. The most telling detail is the entrance: a gap just over three metres wide on the eastern side, with a slight causeway raised across the fosse to allow passage, the eastern orientation being conventional for ringforts of this type. On the south side, a later field boundary has been laid directly along the line of the outer bank, which is one reason that stretch of the monument is so heavily eroded; the ESE to SW arc of both the inner bank and the fosse has been almost entirely lost, absorbed by centuries of agricultural use. The outer bank survives in clearest form to the north and north-east, where the land has been less disturbed.

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