Enclosure, Mullaghgar, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Enclosures
At Mullaghgar in County Sligo, a roughly circular enclosure sits on a low rise where a public road and a laneway meet at an angle, its presence so understated that nineteenth-century cartographers apparently missed it entirely.
The 1837 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which recorded countless earthworks and field monuments across Ireland during that great period of national mapping, makes no mention of it. That omission alone gives the site a slightly puzzling quality, raising questions about whether it was already so degraded by then as to go unnoticed, or simply overlooked.
Enclosures of this kind, defined by a bank of earth and stone forming a roughly circular boundary, are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, often associated with early medieval settlement or agricultural use, though their precise date and function can vary considerably. This one measures approximately thirty metres in diameter, with the bank reaching about four metres in width where it can be examined, though it rises only around twenty centimetres above the surrounding ground. There is no fosse, the external ditch that typically accompanies earthwork enclosures, visible at ground level. The bank has been heavily disturbed by quarrying in the accessible sections, and the original entrance can no longer be identified. Dense overgrowth now covers most of the monument, leaving only the north-eastern edge reachable at all.