Enclosure, Derrymore, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Derrymore, Co. Mayo

On a wooded rise in the rough pastureland of Derrymore, County Mayo, there is a circular enclosure that resists easy explanation.

The ground undulates around it, the vegetation is dense, and the remains themselves are, by any honest account, difficult to interpret. What survives is fragmentary: traces of a boundary, a field fence running north to south that appears to follow the curve of the original enclosure rather than cut across it, suggesting that whoever built or maintained that fence knew the older feature was there and chose to respect it.

The enclosure was recorded on the Ordnance Survey map of 1838, which means it was visible and legible enough in the early nineteenth century to warrant marking, even if its origins and purpose were already obscure. Circular enclosures of this kind in Ireland can belong to a wide range of periods and functions, from early medieval ringforts used as farmsteads, to earlier prehistoric boundaries, to ecclesiastical enclosures surrounding early Christian sites. Without excavation or additional documentary evidence, placing this particular example within that spectrum is not possible. What the 1838 mapping does confirm is that the feature predates the systematic reorganisation of the Irish landscape that followed the Famine years, and that it had enough physical presence at that point to catch a surveyor's eye.

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