Mound, Drumsheen, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Mound, Drumsheen, Co. Mayo

On the narrow spine of a north-south ridge in County Mayo, a low, sod-covered mound sits with a pointed stone slab rising from its flat top, like a finger pressed into the landscape.

The mound is modest in scale, roughly 6.7 metres east-west and 5.3 metres north-south, rising only 1.3 metres from the surrounding pasture, yet its position is deliberate. From here, the ground falls away in every direction across a sharply undulating mix of grassland and bog, with the Ox Mountains drawing a dark line along the far horizon to the east, beyond a stream and wide expanses of blanket bog.

The upright slab set into the top of the mound is itself a striking detail. It tapers to a narrow point and is orientated east-west, its base buried deeply into the mound's surface. A denuded section along the northern edge has exposed something of the structure beneath: a basal layer of orange, sandy silt sits at the bottom, above which the body of the mound is composed of grey-brown, stony soil. A large boulder has been incorporated into the northern face, and a hawthorn bush, a tree long associated in Irish tradition with boundaries and the otherworld, grows from the base of the slope. More striking still is what lies immediately to the east: a separate standing stone, a single upright megalith, sits just 1.4 metres from the mound's edge, suggesting this small ridge-top was a place of some significance, though its precise purpose and age remain unrecorded. The relationship between the mound and the standing stone, placed so close together, raises questions that the ground itself keeps quiet.

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Pete F
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