Ringfort (Cashel), Castlecarra, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Castlecarra, Co. Mayo

On a ridge above Castlecarra in County Mayo, a roughly circular stone enclosure sits quietly among rock outcrops, its low wall still tracing a perimeter that measures around sixty metres north to south and sixty-five metres east to west.

What makes it particularly worth noting is not just its scale but the combination of features crowded onto this one elevated spur: a cashel, which is a stone-built ringfort, lies a short distance to the north-north-west, suggesting this ridge was deliberately chosen and densely occupied at some point in the early medieval period.

The enclosure itself is a cashel by construction, its boundary wall built in what is described as dump style, meaning rubble and stone were piled rather than carefully coursed, and it survives to a height of roughly 0.8 metres. The southern section shows signs of quarrying, which likely accounts for some of the wall's degradation. Inside, the ground is heavily overgrown, but beneath the vegetation lies a collapsed souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber of the kind commonly associated with early Irish settlement sites, used variously for storage, refuge, or both. The presence of a souterrain points to a settlement of some substance, one whose inhabitants went to considerable effort to construct a subterranean feature alongside the enclosing wall. With the neighbouring cashel to the north-north-west, the site forms part of what appears to be a small cluster of related early medieval remains on the same rocky high ground above the Lough Carra landscape.

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Pete F
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