Enclosure, Bohola, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Bohola, Co. Mayo

In a stretch of rough, wet pasture in Bohola, County Mayo, a low circular rise sits quietly in the landscape, grass noticeably greener than the rushes that surround it.

The feature is roughly circular in plan, measuring about 28 metres north to south and 25 metres east to west, and rises only around half a metre above the surrounding ground. What makes it particularly curious is its profile: rather than forming a simple mound, the centre dips inward, creating a broad depression roughly 12 metres across, so the whole thing reads as a shallow dish or ring when seen from close up. The sides slope so gently that the form nearly dissolves into the surrounding field.

This kind of earthwork is broadly described as an enclosure, a catch-all term in Irish archaeology for a defined, bounded area whose original function is not always clear. Some enclosures served as farmsteads or settlement sites in the early medieval period; others had ritual or funerary purposes. The dished profile here is distinctive and somewhat unusual, though without excavation its date and use remain open questions. What the landscape around it does suggest is a place of some long-term significance. About 100 metres to the north-north-east, a church and graveyard occupy higher ground. Roughly 200 metres in the same direction lies a motte, a raised earthen mound of the kind thrown up by Norman lords in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as the base for a timber tower. The clustering of these features, an enclosure of likely earlier date, a medieval church and burial ground, and a Norman motte, points to a locality that drew repeated human attention across several centuries.

The enclosure itself is most visible as a change in vegetation: the grassy rise standing out against the rougher, wetter ground that surrounds it. Visiting in drier months makes the form easier to read underfoot, and approaching from the south, where the ground rises gently, gives a reasonable sense of how the feature sits within its wider setting.

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Pete F
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