Enclosure, Cahernagollum, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Enclosures
In the reclaimed pasture of Cahernagollum, County Mayo, a circular enclosure sits quietly in a landscape that has largely moved on without it.
It appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1838, drawn at a time when Irish cartographers were systematically recording features that locals had long taken for granted, and it has changed little in the official record since.
What makes the site quietly interesting is what it might once have been. The surrounding terrain, according to local archaeological survey work covering the Ballinrobe district and the shores of Lough Mask and Lough Carra, is consistent with a cashel, a type of early medieval stone-walled enclosure, typically circular, that served as a farmstead or small settlement. The word cashel itself comes from the Irish caiseal, and these structures were the stone equivalent of the earthen ringfort, built by farming families across Ireland roughly between the sixth and tenth centuries. The place name Cahernagollum carries the same linguistic root, caher being an anglicisation of cathair, another Irish word for a stone fort or enclosure, which makes the possible identification feel all the more plausible. That said, the site has not been excavated or formally confirmed as a cashel, and it remains a question mark on the edge of improved farmland.