Enclosure, Ballytoohy More, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Ballytoohy More, Co. Mayo

Five metres from a cliff edge on the eastern coast of Clare Island, an ancient enclosure sits in quiet dilapidation on a south-south-east-facing slope of open heath.

What makes its position unusual is less its age than its precariousness: whoever chose this spot built close to the edge, literally, on a level shelf of ground just below a natural break of slope scattered with boulders. The surrounding landscape still bears the marks of ridge and furrow cultivation, the long parallel earthworks left by spade tillage, and these later field boundaries press right up against the outer face of the enclosure on its southern side, as though the farming that came after it was simply arranged around what was already there.

The enclosure itself is roughly oval in plan, measuring approximately 16.8 metres on its north-east to south-west axis and 14.3 metres across. It is defined by an earth and stone bank, partially overgrown with heather, that survives best along its north-western and northern arc, where it still stands to around 0.9 metres in height internally. Elsewhere the bank has been considerably reduced, particularly on the south-western and western sides, where it may have been further disturbed or partly buried by the cultivation ridges that abut it. Along the north-eastern to east-north-eastern arc, the bank has collapsed into little more than a loose scatter of boulders, though a few well-set slabs suggest that an external revetment, a facing of carefully placed stone, once lined at least part of the structure. A single well-set slab also survives on the western line of the bank, oriented at right angles to it. There is no trace of a surrounding ditch, and no clearly defined entrance, though gaps in the bank at the north-north-east, east, and west may point to where one once existed. Inside, the ground slopes gently from west to east, is rough underfoot, and is dotted with large moss-covered boulders among bracken and young willow saplings.

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Pete F
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