Ecclesiastical enclosure, Cullentragh, Co. Mayo

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Ecclesiastical Sites

Ecclesiastical enclosure, Cullentragh, Co. Mayo

On a high ridge east of the Meander River in County Mayo, there is a large oval enclosure that most people walking past would read as nothing more unusual than a sloping field boundary.

What it actually marks is the outline of an early ecclesiastical enclosure, roughly 150 metres in diameter, where local tradition holds that a religious community once settled. The enclosure, an earthwork boundary that would originally have defined a sacred or monastic precinct, is no longer intact in the way it once was, but the land still holds its shape if you know what to look for.

A 1931 Ordnance Survey map recorded the enclosure clearly, showing its roughly oval form. By the time any serious attention was paid to the site on the ground, a stone field fence running roughly west-northwest to east-southeast had already divided it into two sectors. The southern portion had been reclaimed for agricultural use, though a scarp, that is, a low earthen drop or slope that marks the former edge of a bank or ditch, survives to a height of around 1.3 metres along part of its line. The northern portion remains more legible from ground level, with the scarp continuing in that direction. A breach some 28 metres wide in the eastern side may represent the original entrance through the enclosure boundary. In 1982, land clearance removed the inner and outer earthen banks along with two upright stones. That work also uncovered human bones, a reminder that sites like this frequently served not just as places of worship or monastic life but as burial grounds for the surrounding community across many centuries.

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