Enclosure, Ballindoo, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Enclosures
A low, sod-covered bank rising only thirty centimetres above the surrounding pasture might not seem like much, but the enclosure at Ballindoo quietly holds its ground in a field of average Mayo grassland, its interior sunk slightly below the surrounding earth and choked with blackthorn dense enough to be genuinely impassable.
What makes it stranger still is what lies just to the west: a megalithic tomb, its relationship to the enclosure entirely obscured by that same overgrowth, leaving the connection between the two structures an open question.
The enclosure is roughly D-shaped now, measuring about 28.6 metres on its longer axis and approximately 26 metres east to west, though it was probably circular or oval originally. Enclosures of this kind, defined by a low earthen or stone bank, are found widely across Ireland and are thought to date from the early medieval period, though some may be considerably older. Here, the curving northern and south-western arc of the bank is composed of small and medium-sized stones beneath its grassy covering, visible only where erosion has stripped the sod back. The straight western side is formed not by the original bank but by an existing field fence, suggesting that the enclosure was absorbed into a later field system at some point. It does not appear on the 1838 Ordnance Survey six-inch maps at all, only showing up on the 1920 edition, which raises the possibility that it had become so low-lying by the nineteenth century as to pass unremarked. A low internal scarp runs roughly ten metres into the interior from the north-east, its purpose unclear. Relict cultivation ridges, the faint corrugations left by old lazy-bed farming, are still visible in the surrounding field. About eight metres to the south-south-east, a pit filled with wrecked cars offers a jarring note of the contemporary alongside the ancient.