Ringfort (Cashel), Carrowbaun, Co. Mayo

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Ringfort (Cashel), Carrowbaun, Co. Mayo

Two stone ringforts positioned within sight of each other is not as common a pairing as one might expect, and the cashel at Carrowbaun in County Mayo makes the most of that fact.

From inside its ruined walls, a second cashel is visible roughly 350 metres to the south-west, close enough to suggest the two enclosures were part of the same landscape of settlement rather than isolated curiosities. A cashel is simply a ringfort defined by a stone wall rather than an earthen bank, and this one sits on a south-east-facing slope on the north-western edge of a natural hollow, sheltered on three sides by rising ground but open to the south-west where the companion site comes into view.

The enclosure itself is roughly circular, measuring about 65.6 metres east to west and 68 metres north to south. It is defined by a collapsed inner wall, now a broad, sod-covered stony spread between 3.5 and 7.7 metres wide depending on where you measure it. Outside that wall, at least on the eastern half, a second outer wall and an intervening flat-based fosse, or ditch, can still be traced. The fosse appears narrower than it once was, probably because material from the collapsed inner wall has slumped into it over the centuries. At the north-north-east, a low gap in the inner wall and a causeway-like rise across the fosse might mark an entrance, though this could equally be a later alteration. Near the centre of the interior, a sub-circular stone platform roughly 11 by 9 metres, sitting on a slightly raised area of ground, may represent the footprint of a house. Later field walls, running both north to south and east to west, cut across the interior and overlie the south-western edge of the cashel, showing the site was put to agricultural use long after its original purpose had faded.

The interior today is grassed over, dotted with sod-covered heaps of field clearance stones, and punctuated by ferns, blackthorn scrub, and occasional hawthorn trees. A further enclosure lies about 120 metres to the south-east, adding to the sense that this part of the Mayo landscape was once considerably busier than it appears now.

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