Mound, Rathlee, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Ritual/Ceremonial
On the eastern shore of Killala Bay in County Sligo, a small mound of sand and stone sits on a westward-facing slope, surviving in only partial form after quarrying removed much of its northern and north-eastern sections.
What remains spans no more than eight metres east to west and rises to just 1.6 metres at its highest western point, tapering to roughly half a metre at the eastern and south-eastern edges. Unassuming as it now appears, the site carries a particular kind of quiet significance: it does not appear on any edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, meaning it passed without official cartographic recognition for the entirety of that mapping tradition.
The mound was identified by M.A. Timoney in 1993 through personal communication rather than formal survey, placing it among those sites that owe their documentation to local knowledge and attentive fieldwork rather than to any systematic record. Its composition of sand and stone is consistent with the coastal character of the surrounding landscape, though its precise origin and purpose have not been established in available records. The damage caused by quarrying is a reminder of how vulnerable small, unmapped features are; without a named place on a map to anchor them, such mounds can disappear incrementally before anyone formally notes their existence.