Enclosure, Ballinteeaun, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballinteeaun, Co. Mayo

In the level pasture of Ballinteeaun, in County Mayo, lies an archaeological site that is, by any practical measure, no longer there.

A circular enclosure once occupied this ground, the kind of feature that appears across Ireland in countless variations, from simple ringforts used as farmsteads in the early medieval period to prehistoric enclosures whose purposes remain debated. What makes this particular example quietly striking is the gap between its documentary existence and its physical one.

The enclosure was recorded on the Ordnance Survey map of 1838, which means that at least at that point it was still legible in the landscape, its outline clear enough for surveyors to trace and commit to paper. At some point after that, it was levelled, whether by agricultural improvement, land clearance, or the gradual pressure of farming on marginal features. By the time local archaeological survey work was carried out in the early 1990s, nothing remained visible at the surface. The site exists now as a cartographic memory, a circle on a nineteenth-century map with nothing beneath your feet to confirm it.

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Pete F
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