Embanked enclosure, Cummeen, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Enclosures

Embanked enclosure, Cummeen, Co. Sligo

In a waterlogged field of rush grass just south of Cummeen Strand, on the inner reaches of Sligo Bay, sits a large circular earthwork that most people walking nearby would never notice, and those who did might easily mistake for a natural rise in the ground.

It is roughly a hundred metres across, enclosed by a flat-topped bank of earth and stone, and outside that bank runs a fosse, a flat-bottomed ditch that once made the whole structure considerably more imposing than the low, eroded profile it presents today. What makes the arrangement quietly compelling is what occupies the centre: not an empty interior, but a smaller enclosure nested within the larger one, and within that, a cairn, a mound of stones whose age and purpose remain unrecorded.

The site was formerly part of the estate of Cummeen House, and the land it occupies still bears the marks of centuries of agricultural use. The bank, which measures nearly five and a half metres wide at its base, survives to an external height of about one and two-thirds of a metre on most sides, though at the north-east it has been reduced to little more than a scarp, a low sloping edge where the original profile has been lost. Several breaks interrupt the circuit, attributed to animal action over time, and no original entrance has been identified with any confidence. This kind of embanked enclosure, defined by a raised earthen or stone-faced bank with an accompanying external ditch, appears across Ireland in various forms and periods, though the function of any individual example is rarely straightforward to determine without excavation. The concentric arrangement here, an outer enclosure containing a smaller one containing a cairn, gives the site a structured, almost ceremonial quality.

The perimeter is now densely overgrown, with vegetation pressing in on parts of the interior as well, which makes a clear view of the full circuit difficult from ground level. The damp, rush-heavy pasture surrounding it is not easy going underfoot, particularly in wetter months.

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Pete F
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