Enclosure, Ballindoo, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballindoo, Co. Mayo

Between the first Ordnance Survey of 1838 and the early twentieth century, roughly a quarter of this ancient enclosure quietly vanished.

The southern arc of the ring was dug away at some point, and by 1920 what had once been mapped as a near-perfect circle, around 25 metres across, appeared on revised maps as a semicircle, with a field boundary zigzagging through its interior. That slow dismantling by agriculture is itself part of the story of such sites across the Irish countryside.

Enclosures of this kind, typically a circular or oval earthen bank defining a bounded space, are among the most common early medieval monuments in Ireland, often associated with settlement or farming activity stretching back well over a thousand years. This particular example sits on a low rise in County Mayo, with open rough grassland and stretches of blanket bog spreading out around it. The surviving bank is modest, measuring about 1.6 metres wide, with an internal height of only 20 centimetres on the northern side rising to 45 centimetres on the east, and an external height of around 80 centimetres at the north. Those small variations in height hint at uneven survival rather than any deliberate shaping. What can still be traced curves away to the north-east, though the southern portion has long since been absorbed into later field fences, and additional boundaries radiate outward from the enclosure at the south-east, south, and north, giving the whole area the look of a farmscape that has grown over and through something much older.

The site is currently engulfed in gorse and brambles, making close examination genuinely difficult. The vegetation has effectively reclaimed what erosion and agricultural improvement left behind, so the enclosure is easier to appreciate as a shape on an old map than as a feature underfoot.

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