Enclosure, Dún Ibhir, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Dún Ibhir, Co. Mayo

On a low rise in Dún Ibhir, County Mayo, a site sits on the official record of Irish antiquities that no longer exists, or perhaps never did in any recoverable form.

The spot commands excellent views in all directions, the kind of elevated ground that prehistoricand early medieval people consistently chose for enclosed settlements. But where an enclosure, typically a circular or oval area defined by an earthen bank or stone wall and used for habitation or the protection of livestock, might once have stood, there is now a modern dwelling house and its garden.

The site entered the Sites and Monuments Record in 1991 and the Record of Monuments and Places in 1997, both times classified as an enclosure. That designation rested not on any surviving physical evidence but on local knowledge, specifically a communication from a T. McDonald in 1991. When the location was formally inspected in 1996, no visible remains of an enclosure could be found. The house and garden had either replaced whatever once occupied the rise, or the original information pointed to something that had already long since vanished into the ground. It is not unusual for enclosures to leave traces detectable only through aerial photography or geophysical survey, and equally not unusual for a site to be recorded on the strength of local memory alone, memory that sometimes preserves what the landscape no longer shows.

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Pete F
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