The story of Drumena Cashel
A cashel is a ringfort with a stone rather than earth-and-bank wall, the kind of defended farmstead built across Ireland in the early Christian period, roughly the 6th to 10th centuries. Drumena was home and protection for a single family and their livestock, with the thick wall and lockable interior keeping cattle and sheep safe at night and giving cover during the unsettled centuries of Viking raids. It is not closely datable from the finds, but it belongs firmly to that early medieval world of dispersed farming settlements.
The oval enclosure here has a drystone wall measured between 2.7 and 3.6 metres thick. Inside, a scatter of confused stones in the south part marks the foundations of a house, and there is a probable original entrance gap on the east side. The cashel was partly reconstructed after it was excavated in 1925-26, which is why the walls stand as clearly as they do today.
The souterrain is the site's defining feature. These man-made underground passages, built of drystone walling and roofed with heavy stone lintels, served as cold stores for food and as hiding places or escape routes in a raid. Drumena's is T-shaped, entered originally through its southeast arm, with the main passage running roughly 15 metres and a chamber off it. Some of the original lintels have been replaced in concrete to keep it safe for visitors.
Today Drumena is one of the best-surviving cashels in County Down and a scheduled monument in the care of the Department for Communities. Free and open, it lets you stand inside the walls of an early Irish farm and crawl into a stone passage built more than a thousand years ago.