Enclosure, Carrowmore, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Enclosures
At Carrowmore in County Mayo, there is a recorded archaeological enclosure whose details remain, for now, almost entirely unknown to the public.
The site carries a formal monument designation, which means surveyors at some point identified something here worth cataloguing, a boundary earthwork, a ringfort, a field system remnant, or some other enclosed feature in the landscape. Beyond that, the record is essentially silent.
Enclosures of this kind are among the most common monument types in the Irish countryside. They range from early medieval ringforts, which were defended farmsteads typically consisting of a circular earthen bank and ditch, to prehistoric ceremonial enclosures and later agricultural boundaries. The townland name Carrowmore, derived from the Irish An Cheathrú Mhór meaning "the big quarter," is itself one of the more frequently occurring place names in Connacht, pointing to a landscape long divided and farmed. That a formal enclosure was identified here is entirely plausible given the density of such sites across County Mayo, but without further detail, its age, character, and condition remain open questions.