Ringfort (Cashel), Tullyduff, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Cashel), Tullyduff, Co. Mayo

What gives this site in Tullyduff its particular character is the entrance: a causeway just 1.6 metres wide, flanked by fourteen stone slabs laid in a deliberate line, guiding whoever approaches through the only formal break in the enclosure.

It is a small, precise detail that survives in undulating pasture west of Lough Mask, and it is the kind of thing that makes the difference between a jumble of old stones and a place that still reads as a considered piece of construction.

This is a cashel, a term for a ringfort built primarily in stone rather than earth and timber. The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring 65 metres north to south and 59 metres east to west, and what remains of two concentric stone walls still stands, though only to about 0.3 metres in height. Between those walls lies a rubble-filled fosse, the depression or ditch that would once have added a further obstacle to anyone approaching without invitation, still reaching a depth of 1.5 metres. The interior slopes gently downward toward the east. In the north-west corner, a subrectangular hut site approximately 7.5 by 6.2 metres is recorded, and on the western side there is a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber typically associated with storage or, in some interpretations, refuge. Loose stone is scattered around the walls across the site. The entire area is enclosed within a later stone field fence, which separates it tidily from the surrounding farmland without disguising what lies inside.

The site was documented in D. Lavelle's 1994 archaeological survey of the Ballinrobe district, which covered the broader landscape around Lough Mask and Lough Carra. That survey captured the basic measurements and features that still allow a visitor to make sense of the site today, even in its reduced and weathered state.

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