Enclosure, Summerhill, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Summerhill, Co. Mayo

On a hilltop near Summerhill in County Mayo, there is a site that exists more convincingly on paper than it does on the ground.

A 1931 Ordnance Survey map marks a circular enclosure here, with an estimated maximum diameter of around 38 metres, sitting in what is now open pasture. Visit today and you will find nothing visible at the surface, no earthen banks, no ditches, no tumbled stonework. The enclosure has effectively vanished into the grass.

The site is tentatively identified as a ringfort, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in Ireland. Ringforts were typically enclosed farmsteads, defined by one or more circular banks and ditches, built to protect a household and its livestock. Thousands survive across the Irish countryside in various states of preservation, but many others have been levelled over the centuries by agriculture, land improvement schemes, or simple erosion. The Summerhill example, recorded in a local archaeological survey of the Ballinrobe district compiled by D. Lavelle in 1994, offers little beyond its map footprint to work with. An estimated diameter of 38 metres would place it within the typical size range for a single-banked ringfort, but without excavation or visible remains, that classification remains a possibility rather than a conclusion.

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Pete F
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