Sunday, 14 June 2026

Drumena Cashel and Souterrain, County Down

Drumena Cashel.

I was to pass by Drumena Cashel on my way home through County Down a while ago so I stopped by to see it rather than drive straight past.

It's between Castlewellan and Kilcoo and lies close to the road.

The weather wasn't the kindest, but was rather a "soft day thank God" kind of day.

An onsite information board describes Drumena Cashel as an example of an early Christian era Cashel "farmstead enclosure".

While this might be true for the Cashel at Drumena it certainly is not true for all Cashels.

A Cashel is usually

(though not always) a single defensive circular wall constructed of stone, sometimes built to a significant height.

It is often thought that most Cashels were indeed small homesteads or farmsteads but some of the larger ones such as at Lough Gur in County Limerick appear to be multi Cashel outposts, possibly with some of the walled enclosures used to safeguard livestock in times of crisis or uncertainty .

The straightforward definition of a Cashel is simply a "Stone Fort" and the period of their usage is often given as sometime between the middle/late Iron age to the early medieval period, roughly 200 C.E. to 1000 C.E.

Those dates are a very rough estimation. Some Cashels were probably seeing continuation in use until considerably later in time.

It is also possibly quite likely that some Cashels were purely defensive in nature with no ongoing habituation and used only in times of War.

There are literally hundreds of Cashels to be found in Ireland and some contain accessable Souterrains such as the Cashel at Drumena.

Souterrains are underground passages used for the storage of goods and foodstuffs.

As well as being a safe place to store food it's possible the darkness, confined space and cooler stable temperature inside helped with preservation of foodstuffs and protection of it from vermin or interlopers.

In some places larger Souterrains could also afford temporary protection or shelter to local inhabitants. I'm thinking in particular of the large Cave of the Cats, Oweynagat in Roscommon, which was also a Souterrain although not in the context of Cashels.

Below is the entrance to the Souterrain made accessable with the addition of some steps

Cahergall Cashel - Kerry (OPW)

It's quite likely that some Cashels were used for metalworking and were early armouries much like Rathgall Hillfort in Wicklow which was a large base for small scale industrial Sword making.