Ringfort (Cashel), Cartron, Co. Roscommon

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Cartron, Co. Roscommon

On a drumlin slope in County Roscommon, an oval enclosure sits so quietly absorbed into the landscape that its northern perimeter has been swallowed wholesale into a field wall.

This is a cashel, a ringfort built from stone rather than earth and bank, and its defining feature is now barely legible: a spread of stone, varying in width from under a metre on the east side to more than two metres on the west, with only occasional facing stones still visible to suggest that the original wall was a deliberate, dressed construction rather than rubble drift. No entrance can be made out anywhere along the circuit.

The site occupies a natural shelf on the north-east-facing slope of the drumlin, a low elongated hill shaped by glacial deposits, and measures roughly 26 metres on its longer north-east to south-west axis and around 20 metres across. The interior survives to a modest height, between ten and fifty centimetres above ground level, while the exterior face rises somewhat more, to between sixty and ninety centimetres. Cashels of this kind are generally associated with early medieval settlement, typically from the first millennium AD, serving as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or small community. What gives this particular example an added layer of interest is its proximity to a second site: a rath, the earthen equivalent of a cashel, lies approximately 180 metres to the south-south-west. Two different forms of enclosed settlement, built from different materials, within easy sight of one another on the same drumlin system, suggests this corner of Roscommon was more actively organised in the early medieval period than its present overgrown quietness might imply.

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