Enclosure, Magheralackagh, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Magheralackagh, Co. Sligo

In the rough pasture of Magheralackagh, on a south-east-facing slope in County Sligo, there may be a circular enclosure roughly thirty metres across.

The uncertainty is the point: the feature is not visible at ground level. Whatever it once was, it has sunk below the threshold of ordinary perception, leaving no mound, no ditch, no wall to catch the eye of a passing walker.

The only evidence for its existence comes from a cartographic ghost. The 1914 Ordnance Survey six-inch map records an arc of hachures, those small lines surveyors used to indicate slopes or earthworks, running from south-south-west to south-south-east. That arc is consistent with the curve of a circular enclosure, the kind of defined, bounded space that appears throughout the Irish countryside in forms ranging from early medieval ringforts to prehistoric settlements. Whether this particular example was ever substantial, or whether it was already fading when the surveyors came through in the early twentieth century, is not recorded. The 1914 map captures a moment when the feature was legible enough to note but apparently not significant enough to name or classify with confidence.

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Pete F
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