Enclosure, Ballyhenry, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballyhenry, Co. Mayo

In the undulating pasture of Ballyhenry in County Mayo, a rough oval of tumbled boulders sits quietly on an east-facing slope, its purpose long since forgotten.

The enclosure measures roughly 32 metres north to south and 38 metres east to west, dimensions that place it comfortably in the category of field monuments known simply as enclosures, a catch-all term for roughly circular or oval areas defined by a wall or bank, found across Ireland in their thousands and dating from anywhere between the Bronze Age and the early medieval period.

What survives here is a ruined wall of boulders, still traceable from the north-east around to the south-west, though the rest has largely collapsed or been absorbed into the landscape over time. Such enclosures could have served many functions: a farmstead boundary, a livestock pound, or the outer wall of a small settlement. Without excavation it is impossible to say which, and the notes record no associated finds or features that might narrow the question. The site was catalogued as part of a 1994 archaeological survey of the Ballinrobe district, which also took in the areas around Lough Mask and Lough Carra, two lakes that dominate this part of south Mayo and that have drawn human settlement to their margins for millennia.

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