Pollacheeny Fort, Cabraghkeel, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Ringforts

Pollacheeny Fort, Cabraghkeel, Co. Sligo

On the eastern shore of Killala Bay in County Sligo, a slight rise in the pasture is all that announces an ancient enclosed site.

The ground lifts almost imperceptibly, resolving into a subcircular platform roughly 25 metres across, ringed by a levelled bank. There is no fosse, the defensive ditch that typically accompanies this kind of enclosure, and no trace of an original entrance survives. What catches the eye instead is a depression near the centre of the interior, the surface sag that marks a collapsed souterrain beneath.

A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, usually associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, and typically used for storage or, in times of threat, as a refuge. Their presence beneath ringforts and enclosures of this type is common enough, but the collapsed roof here gives the site an unexpectedly hollow quality, a reminder that the ground underfoot is not entirely solid. The fort sits on a low rise in otherwise flat, wet pastureland, roughly fifty metres from the rocky shoreline, close enough that any early occupants would have had an unobstructed outlook across the bay. The relationship between the enclosure and the water is not explained by what survives above ground, but the position feels considered rather than incidental.

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