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Cashel & souterrain is an early Christian settlement located in County Down, Northern Ireland. The site comprises a cashel, a ringfort with stone walls rather than earthen banks, together with a souterrain or underground stone-lined passage. These monuments are characteristic of the early Christian period in Ireland, typically dating from the 5th to 8th centuries. The cashel would have served as a defended homestead and possibly housed an ecclesiastical community, whilst the souterrain likely functioned as a place of refuge during times of danger or as a storage facility for valuables and food.
The site is built upon bedrock of Gala Group wacke, a coarse-grained sedimentary rock formed during the Telychian period of the Ordovician. This geology would have provided readily available stone for the construction of the defensive walls and the souterrain's stone-lined passages, shaping both the appearance and building methods employed at this location.
The monument is protected under Historic Environment Division reference 8427 and remains an important record of early Christian settlement patterns and defensive architecture in medieval Ulster. Such sites are crucial to understanding the social, economic and spiritual organisation of early Christian communities in Ireland.
Cashel & souterrain is a scheduled monument protected by Department for Communities NI under reference 8427. View the official record →
Cashel & souterrain is an early Christian settlement located in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by DfC Northern Ireland (NISMR) under reference 8427.
Cashel & souterrain dates from the e.christ. period, and is classified as a cashel. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
Cashel & souterrain is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, legally protected by DfC Northern Ireland (NISMR) — the body responsible for designating and safeguarding heritage sites in Ni. The official designation reference is 8427.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including D-shaped enclosure - possibly cemetery (1.6 km), Cashel (4.7 km), Cashel (5.5 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 14 strands of Cashel & souterrain's history, each drawn from the record and mapped to the exact spot:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Cashel & souterrain stands on Gala Group, bedrock that formed in the Telychian. The rock here is wacke.