Earthwork, Roos, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Earthwork, Roos, Co. Mayo

In a field in Roos, County Mayo, there is almost nothing to see.

What was once recorded as a subcircular earthwork, roughly fifteen metres across, has left no visible trace at ground level. The only clue that something once existed here may be a pair of trees, an oak and a birch, possibly marking the spot where a raised or enclosed feature once interrupted the level pasture.

The site sits in what was formerly the demesne of Mount Jennings House, the managed estate lands that would have surrounded the house and its grounds. It does not appear on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1838, which is itself a significant absence; the OS mapping of that period was detailed enough to capture earthworks of far more modest proportions. By the 1915 edition, however, the feature had been recorded as a hachured subcircular form, the conventional cartographic shorthand for a raised or irregular earthen mound. Whether the earthwork had grown visible in the intervening decades, was simply missed in 1838, or was recorded from local knowledge rather than direct observation is not clear. What the maps together suggest is a feature that was either marginal or already diminished by the time cartographers turned their attention to it.

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Pete F
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