Field system, Straduff, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field system, Straduff, Co. Sligo

Just north of Geevagh village in County Sligo, a stretch of undulating wet pasture holds the faint outline of an older landscape pressed beneath the one in use today.

Spread across roughly 300 metres by 250 metres of ground marked by limestone outcrops and scrubby bushes, this relict field system is the kind of feature that modern farming has absorbed rather than erased, leaving the earlier pattern legible if you know what to look for.

The most substantial surviving element sits in the north-western quarter of the area: a roughly pentagonal enclosure, approximately 50 metres north to south and 55 metres east to west, whose western edge is formed by an earth and stone boundary and whose remaining sides are defined by a disused wall of limestone rubble now softened under a covering of sod. That wall still stands between 0.7 and 1.2 metres high in places, which is enough to read as deliberate construction even after long neglect. Adjoining it to the north-east is a smaller rectangular plot, only 20 metres across in either direction, edged by a lower earth and stone bank. About 150 metres to the south-south-east, two further linear banks, each running roughly 50 metres in length, carry the system a little further across the ground. The irregular, non-rectilinear geometry of these enclosures, particularly the pentagonal field, suggests boundaries that were laid out pragmatically around the natural obstacles of rock and slope rather than surveyed to any formal plan, which is characteristic of pre-improvement field organisation across much of the west of Ireland.

What makes the site quietly worth attention is the gap between what can be seen from the ground and what aerial photography has revealed. Additional field boundaries, visible in aerial imagery, have left no trace at surface level, meaning the landscape underfoot preserves only a partial record of what was once a more complete system. The full extent of the earlier arrangement has effectively been absorbed back into the land.

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Pete F
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