Enclosure, Coolcon, Co. Mayo

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Coolcon, Co. Mayo

On a ridge in Coolcon, in the west of County Mayo, a low earthen platform sits in open pasture with the Partry Mountains lined up along the western horizon.

It does not look like much at first. The ground is uneven, a solitary hawthorn grows along the northern edge, and a loose cluster of six boulders occupies the eastern half of the interior. But the shape of the thing repays attention: roughly D-shaped, it is the surviving half of what was once a circular enclosure, the kind of earthwork, defined by a raised bank or scarp, that would originally have enclosed a dwelling, a farmstead, or some form of bounded space in the early medieval period.

The Ordnance Survey mapping history of the site traces its gradual disappearance from the landscape. On the first six-inch OS maps of 1838 it does not appear at all, which suggests it was already fairly inconspicuous by that point, or simply overlooked by the surveyors. By the time the more detailed 25-inch plans were produced, it was recorded as a circular hachured enclosure of roughly 20 metres in diameter. The 1915 six-inch edition tells a different story: by then the site appears as a semi-circle, with a field boundary running along the straight southeastern edge where the other half had been levelled. That levelling removed the southeastern portion entirely, leaving behind the D-shaped platform that survives today, measuring 18.7 metres northeast to southwest and 10 metres northwest to southeast, with a dilapidated earthen scarp between half a metre and 0.7 metres high defining the curving side. A remnant of a stony field bank still marks the straight southeastern edge, though it has been cleared away elsewhere across the field. The cluster of boulders on the platform's eastern half appears to be incidental, most likely the result of field clearance rather than any original feature of the enclosure. A secondary low scarp runs across the centre of the platform on a roughly north-south axis, marking a change in interior ground level that slopes noticeably downward to the east. About four metres to the west of the enclosure, the ridge itself has been artificially scarped, with traces of stone facing still visible; this is thought to date to the nineteenth century and to represent a field boundary rather than anything older.

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Pete F
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