Ringfort (Cashel), Altanelvick, Co. Sligo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Altanelvick, Co. Sligo

On a north-south ridge in Altanelvick, County Sligo, a low oval enclosure sits slightly raised above the surrounding ground, its stone wall still holding something of its original shape after more than a thousand years.

This is a cashel, the term used for a ringfort built from stone rather than earthen banks and ditches, and what makes this one quietly distinctive is the absence of a fosse, the defensive ditch that typically rings such sites. Here the boundary is the wall alone, roughly 3.7 metres wide but only about 0.6 metres high on the interior, with facing stones visible on both its inner and outer surfaces.

The enclosure measures approximately 28 metres east to west and 26 metres north to south, placing it in the modest range typical of early medieval farmsteads, which is broadly what ringforts are thought to have been: enclosed settlements used by farming families in Ireland roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. A blocked-up gap on the east-south-east side of the wall is likely the original entrance, sealed at some point in the site's long afterlife. More intriguing still is a trace of a souterrain adjoining the wall at the south-west. Souterrains are dry-stone underground passages or chambers built beneath and beside early medieval enclosures, interpreted variously as storage spaces, refuges, or ventilation structures. Their presence at a site often signals that the enclosure was a working, inhabited place rather than purely a boundary marker.

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