Enclosure, Carha, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Enclosures
In the garden of Glencarha House in County Mayo, just twenty metres from the house itself, a low circular rise sits quietly among ordinary pasture.
It is easy to read as a natural feature of the landscape, a gentle swell of ground that the eye passes over without pause. Look more carefully, though, and the geometry becomes deliberate: a roughly circular platform, measuring roughly 15.7 metres north to south and 17 metres east to west, defined by a scarp, an abrupt step or cut edge in the ground, that rises to about 1.4 metres on its northern side.
An enclosure of this type, a raised, embanked area defined by a scarp and a bank, belongs to a category of monument found across Ireland, often associated with early medieval settlement. Here the natural slope of the rise has been incorporated into the design, so that the boundary reads differently depending on where you stand. The scarp is sharpest and most legible on the north and south sides, while towards the south-west and north-west it softens and merges back into the hillside, almost as if the builders were content to let the land do part of the work for them. Along the north-west to north arc, remnants of a bank roughly two metres wide still survive on top of the scarp, and elsewhere stones push up through the grass along the upper edge, suggesting a more substantial structure once ran around the perimeter. The interior tilts slightly downward from north to south, following the natural lay of the ground beneath it.
The enclosure sits within the grounds of a private residence, so access would depend on the goodwill of the landowner. For those who do get close, the northern face offers the clearest sense of the original scarp height, while the protruding stones along the upper edge reward a slow circuit of the rim.