Earthwork, Mullycrock, Co. Monaghan
Co. Monaghan |
Ritual/Ceremonial
On a south-facing slope in Mullycrock, County Monaghan, a small grass-covered platform sits quietly in the corner of a field, bounded by old earthen banks on two sides and flanked by re-cut drainage channels.
It is the kind of feature that registers, if at all, as a slight irregularity in the ground, a raised rectangular area roughly eight metres across in each direction. What makes it worth pausing over is the gap between what it once appeared to be and what survives today.
When cartographers recorded this area for the 1907 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, they marked a D-shaped feature considerably larger than what is visible now, approximately twenty-five metres across in both axes, with hachures indicating a raised or embanked outline. Hachures on OS maps of this period were used to suggest relief and earthwork definition, a shorthand for something the surveyor considered worth noting as a distinct landform. The straight field banks to the north and east, the taller of which rises to around 1.7 metres, appear to follow or incorporate the older earthwork. A curving bank that once completed the southwestern arc of the D-shape had already been removed by around 2013, reducing the visible remains still further. A modern gap cut through the northern bank serves as an entrance to the enclosed area, a practical addition that sits awkwardly against whatever earlier function the enclosure may have served.