Earthwork, Carrowneden, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ritual/Ceremonial
On a patch of elevated pasture in Carrowneden, roughly a hundred metres north of Island Lake, there is nothing to see.
That absence is, in its own way, the point. Somewhere beneath the grass lies what was once a D-shaped earthwork of uncertain origin, its double ramparts and wide ditch now so thoroughly erased that no surface trace remains. The fact that it ever existed at all is known largely because someone thought to measure it before it vanished entirely.
The 1838 Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded an arc of bank curving from south to north-west, with a chord length of around thirty metres. By later map editions, even that outline had been dropped. The most detailed account comes from a 1911 survey by Knox, who found the structure still faintly legible on the ground, though already badly ruined. He described a form consisting of an inner garth, which is simply an enclosed yard or compound, surrounded by a rampart and ditch, with a further outer rampart beyond. At its most intact, the inner rampart stood about six feet above the ditch on the southern side; elsewhere it had slumped to three feet or less. The ditch itself was approximately twelve feet wide. The full extent of the earthwork measured fifty-seven yards from east to west and forty-one from north to south, making it a substantial enclosure by any measure. Knox could not determine its origin or purpose, and that uncertainty has never been resolved. Such earthworks in the Irish landscape can range from early medieval enclosures to later defensive or agricultural constructions, but without further investigation this one offers no firm answers.