Ringfort (Cashel), Seafield, Co. Sligo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Seafield, Co. Sligo

Scattered among the undulating pastureland of Seafield in County Sligo, a low oval platform sits on a ridge, its steep sides still holding their shape after well over a thousand years.

What makes this particular cashel quietly arresting is not its scale, which is modest, roughly 30 metres along its longest axis, but the small details that suggest a far more layered past than its weathered exterior implies.

A cashel is a type of ringfort defined by a stone enclosing wall rather than an earthen bank, and this one retains a fragment of that wall along its north-east to east side, standing only 0.4 metres high but nearly 1.7 metres wide, suggesting the original construction was substantial. An entrance gap of 1.5 metres is still visible on the eastern side. More intriguing is a depression near the western edge of the platform, measuring roughly 5 metres by 3.2 metres and sinking to about 0.75 metres deep. This hollow may mark the roof-fall of a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage commonly built beneath early medieval settlements for storage or refuge. What gives the depression an additional layer of interest is the presence of sea-shells within its soil matrix, which may point to a midden, essentially a domestic rubbish deposit, where food waste accumulated over years of habitation. Sea-shells turning up this far inland are a small but telling detail; they hint at the reach of daily life in early medieval Ireland, where coastal resources moved along networks of local exchange even into areas of elevated pasture.

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Pete F
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