One is a cashel, the other a rath; the first built from stone, the second from earthen banks. That they occupy the same elevated ground, in undulating pasture with long views across the Sligo countryside, raises quiet questions about how this particular ridge was used and by whom.

A cashel is a stone-walled ringfort, the western and northern Irish counterpart to the more familiar earthen rath. Both types date broadly to the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1000 AD, and are thought to have served as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or small community, the wall providing a boundary as much as a defence. The cashel at Carrickbanagher encloses a roughly circular interior about 21 metres across. Its grass-covered stone wall stands to a modest height, half a metre on both the inner and outer faces, though the wall itself is over two metres thick, suggesting it was once considerably more substantial. A possible entrance gap on the southern side measures about 4.4 metres wide. The companion rath lies approximately 200 metres to the north-north-west along the same ridge line.

The pairing of a cashel and a rath in such close proximity on the same landform is the detail that lingers. Whether they were contemporary, or whether one replaced or complemented the other across generations, is not recorded. What remains visible is the low stone circuit sitting in the pasture, worn down but legible, with the wider Sligo landscape opening out around it.