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Sites and Monuments Record · Ireland

Ringfort - cashel

Shantallow, County Mayo, Ireland

Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915) covering the location of Ringfort - cashel, Shantallow, County Mayo, with a pin at the register's coordinates
Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915), covering this location. Courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. The pin is ours, placed from the register's coordinates.

The record

Townland
Shantallow
County
Mayo
Country
Ireland
First-edition OS map
Not indicated
Latest-edition OS map
Not indicated
Coordinates
53.64592, -9.07351
SMR number
MA111-052----

Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

4 historical maps cover this location, the earliest the 1753 map "Mappa geographica Regni Hiberniae" (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries).

Historical maps covering this location

  • 1753 · Mappa geographica Regni Hiberniae (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1790 · Composite: Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1869 · Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1891 · Ireland 16 (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)

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This record in the National Monuments Service's Historic Environment Viewer ↗

The National Monuments Service's description

In gently undulating limestone grassland, straddling an E-W seam of limestone bedrock. Views are good, especially extensive to W.
Recorded in an aerial photograph (SMR file: GSI M 26 –7; Roll 205, pr. 3) as a square or subcircular enclosure crossed roughly centrally by a field wall on a N–S axis.
The outline of a roughly square enclosure (36m NW–SE; c. 36m NE–SW) with rounded corners can be discerned at ground level. It is defined on its W half by a low, sod-covered stone bank/wall (Wth c. 3.5m; int. H 0.5m; ext. H 0.3m at SW). To E of the N-S field wall which crosses the interior, the enclosure has been levelled, but the curve of the N–NE angle can still be traced.
The enclosing wall on the W half is dilapidated and varies in width, and has clearly been much disturbed and robbed out in the past. At N it appears to coincide with a natural bedrock seam. Remnants of original stone facing may survive at SW. At S–SW the wall merges with a low natural rise that extends as a roughly triangular terrace (max. dim. 11m) to SW of the enclosure.
Several sod-covered stony heaps and spreads are evident in the interior. The interior slopes down gradually from N to S, levelling out in the SW quadrant which is clear of stone and appears slightly sunken relative to the rest of the interior. The drop in interior ground level from N to S is c. 1-1.5m

Compiled by: Jane O'Shaughnessy

Date of upload: 21 December 2022

Nearby in the register

Other entries of the same register within about three miles of this one, by straight line.

Sites and Monuments Record data: National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Record text is reproduced unchanged. National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland · CC BY 4.0
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