Ringfort (Rath), Cashels, Co. Mayo

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Ringforts

Ringfort (Rath), Cashels, Co. Mayo

A modern property boundary has, quite literally, cut this early medieval ringfort in two.

The north-to-south fence line that now bisects the site does not merely cross it; it has come to define what survives and what does not. To the east of the fence, the rath has been levelled almost entirely, its circular form legible only as a faint, curving undulation in the pasture grass. To the west, roughly half the original structure remains, presenting itself as a raised D-shaped platform, the straight edge of the D being the fence itself rather than any ancient feature.

A rath, in the Irish archaeological sense, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch, typically dating from the early medieval period and associated with farmstead settlement. This one measures around 33 metres north to south and approximately 34 metres east to west in its original extent, placing it within the typical range for such sites. The surviving western half retains a curving earthen scarp rising to 1.2 metres at the north, with remnants of a broad internal lip still visible along its inner face. Outside the scarp runs a shallow fosse, a ditch roughly 3 metres wide, and beyond that a low stony rise at the south-west which may represent the remnants of an external bank. A second field fence at the north-north-west merges with the rath and cuts across both fosse and bank, compounding the fragmentation. Inside the surviving western half, the ground is uneven and scattered with stones, and two depressions catch the eye: a roughly circular one about 3 metres across near the north-west, and a larger shallow one towards the south-west measuring up to 7 metres. The original entrance is thought to have been on the now-levelled eastern side. Hazel and hawthorn have colonised the bank on the west, and brambles push inward across the interior, while the eastern half sits open under grass.

What makes the Cashels townland particularly interesting is the density of related monuments in the immediate area. Another rath lies approximately 280 metres to the west, and a possible cashel, a stone-walled enclosure of broadly similar function to a rath but built in drystone rather than earth, sits around 180 metres to the south-south-west. Together, these sites suggest a landscape that was once considerably more populated and organised than its present pastoral quiet implies.

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