Earthwork, Carrowbunnaun, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Ritual/Ceremonial
In a field of gently rolling pasture near Carrowbunnaun in County Sligo, a low circular mound sits on a slight rise, its geometry just distinct enough from the surrounding land to suggest it was not put there by accident.
The earthwork is roughly nineteen metres across, enclosed by an earthen scarp that still stands to an external height of around 1.6 metres in places. What is notably absent is a fosse, the defensive ditch that typically rings this kind of enclosure and is usually the first thing to catch the eye. Without one visible at ground level, the site resists easy classification, sitting somewhere in the broad and poorly understood category of enclosed earthworks that dot the Irish countryside, many of which served purposes ranging from settlement and stock management to ritual use.
The enclosure has not escaped the quiet pressures of working farmland. Along the eastern and south-eastern arc of the scarp, livestock have steadily worn away the earthen edge, softening what may once have been a more defined profile. A wire fence, oriented roughly west-northwest to east-southeast, now runs along the top of the scarp between the south-southwest and southwest. The original entrance, if it ever left a clear trace, is no longer legible in the surviving earthwork. What remains is a grass-covered ring, slightly elevated above its surroundings, its origins and function unrecorded beyond its physical dimensions.