Ringfort (Cashel), Ballyhenry, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Ballyhenry, Co. Mayo

Sitting in rough pasture where limestone karst breaks through the ground, this stone ringfort in Ballyhenry quietly holds its shape despite the centuries.

A cashel, as this type of enclosure is known, is a ringfort built from stone rather than earthen banks, and this one forms a near-perfect circle roughly forty metres across in both directions. Its enclosing wall, built by what is described as dump construction, meaning stone was piled rather than carefully coursed, still stands to about ninety centimetres in height and runs to an impressive six metres in width at its base. A narrow gap on the south-eastern side marks what was likely the original entrance, just wide enough for a person.

Within the interior, pressed against the southern wall, are the traces of what may have been a small structure, measuring around seven and a half metres long and just over two metres wide, with a possible entrance on its northern face. This kind of internal house site is a reasonably common feature in Irish cashels, where a family or small community would have lived within the protection of the enclosing wall. The site sits approximately three hundred metres south of a second cashel, suggesting this was once a more densely settled landscape than the rough grazing land it has since become. A modern field fence now cuts across the western portion of the enclosure from north to south, a reminder that agricultural life has continued to reorder the ground long after the original occupants departed.

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Pete F
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