Burial mound, Beltra, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Burial Sites
On the western edge of Lackan Strand in County Mayo, a low grass-covered mound sits at the boundary between a pasture field and the shoreline overlooking Lackan Bay.
Known locally as 'Greenhill', it does not appear on Ordnance Survey maps from 1838 or 1922, which gives some sense of how quietly it has persisted in the landscape. The mound is D-shaped in plan, roughly 70 metres north to south and 40 metres east to west, and is most likely a natural sand dune that was modified and built upon over time. What makes it particularly arresting is what the sea has been doing to it: the eastern face, turned directly towards the strand, has been cut back by wave erosion into a near-vertical section roughly 3.5 metres high, and that exposed face has been slowly revealing the mound's interior for years.
What the erosion has uncovered is a layered history of both living and dying. Stone-lined lintelled graves, oriented east to west as was customary in Early Medieval Christian burial, have been exposed in the upper levels of the mound, some arranged in close-set north to south rows and lying at least 0.6 metres below the surface. In one grave, the skull was positioned at the eastern end. Below the burial levels, the section face has also revealed evidence of domestic occupation, including a hearth and midden material, a midden being a refuse or rubbish deposit that often contains animal bone, shell, and other organic material useful to archaeologists. Concentrations of larger stones at both ends of the section are likely the remnants of a retaining wall or stone facing that once gave the mound its structural edge. In 1998, a bronze zoomorphic penannular brooch, a type of open-ringed pin decorated with animal forms and datable to the 6th or 7th century, was found on the beach immediately beside the mound; it is now held at the National Museum of Ireland. That single object, combined with the east-west grave orientation, points toward Early Medieval use of the site, though the mound's full sequence remains difficult to read. Vegetation, slumping sand, and rabbit burrows all work against any clean interpretation of its stratigraphy.
The flat top of the mound carries several pronounced hollows, between five and ten metres across and roughly 0.4 metres deep, suggesting the surface has been disturbed at various points in the past, possibly through digging or quarrying. Sandy undulations curve around the western base and may preserve the remains of an outer enclosing element or an old field boundary. The erosion continues, and each winter storm has the potential to expose something further.