Ringfort (Cashel), Caher, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ringforts
A stone wall over two metres high and a metre and a half thick is not the kind of thing that quietly disappears into a landscape, yet this cashel near Caher in County Mayo has managed something close to it.
Sitting on a gentle rise in undulating pasture, the circular enclosure stretches to a diameter of fifty-three metres, its substantial dry-stone perimeter running from the north-west around to the south-east. A modern house now occupies the eastern edge of the site, and the interior is under active cultivation, which gives the whole thing an oddly domestic quality. Ancient and everyday, the two have simply arranged themselves around each other.
A cashel is the stone equivalent of a ringfort, those circular enclosed settlements built across Ireland predominantly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They varied enormously in scale and solidity, from modest earthen banks to the kind of thick-walled stone construction seen here. The very townland name, Caher, is itself an anglicisation of the Irish cathair, meaning a stone fort, which suggests this structure, or something like it, was significant enough to name the place after. Part of the wall has been rebuilt at some point, which complicates any reading of what is original and what is later intervention, though the sheer mass of the remaining fabric leaves little doubt about the ambition of whoever first raised it.