Building, Kildun, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Utility Structures

Building, Kildun, Co. Mayo

On a northeast-facing slope above an inlet of Blacksod Bay in County Mayo, a ruined circular building sits in open pasture, modest enough on its own terms but surrounded by a cluster of features that give the spot a quiet density.

Nearby stands a rectangular building, and roughly ninety metres to the southeast lie a burial ground and a cross-inscribed pillar. It is the kind of place where the ordinary and the ancient have settled into close proximity without much fuss.

The circular structure, around twelve metres in diameter with walls approximately 0.9 metres thick, was noted in 1942 by a researcher named Moran, whose published record was enough to earn it a place in the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996. Moran's description suggested something potentially early or ecclesiastical, given the company it keeps, but a field inspection carried out in 1997 concluded rather more plainly that the building is a ruined vernacular structure, the sort of low-walled enclosure that would have served as an animal shelter. Vernacular buildings of this kind, put up from local stone with no particular architectural ambition, are easily mistaken at a distance for older or more significant remains, especially when circular in plan. The form is functional rather than archaic, and the walls have settled into the hillside in the way that working farm structures tend to when they fall out of use.

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