Enclosure, Carrick, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Enclosures
On a ridge above the valley of the Glore River in County Mayo, a roughly circular earthwork sits quietly in pasture, its raised platform still holding its shape after more than a thousand years.
What makes it slightly odd is the way a later drystone field wall has been built directly along the south-east to north-west arc of its enclosing scarp, sitting on top of and incorporating the older earthen boundary as though the wall-builder simply found a useful ready-made foundation and made the most of it. On the western side, a low earthen plinth, roughly 90 centimetres wide and 40 centimetres high, protrudes from beneath the inner edge of that wall, most likely a remnant of the original bank before later construction absorbed it.
The earthwork is a rath, a type of enclosed farmstead common across early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. Raths were usually defined by one or more banks and ditches enclosing a roughly circular area, and many survive across the Irish countryside in varying states of preservation. This example is comparatively well-defined: the raised subcircular platform measures 24 metres north to south and 23 metres east to west, with a scarp dropping some 1.55 metres on its outer face. That face is fairly vertical along most of its arc, though the northern side has slumped outward into a broad spread roughly 3 metres wide, the kind of gradual earthen creep that happens over centuries of weathering. The site commands wide views westward across open boggy ground, and north-eastward over a landscape of undulating bog and pasture, which may itself have looked quite different when the enclosure was first built. A second rath sits approximately 100 metres downslope to the north, a reminder that these sites often occur in clusters, perhaps reflecting adjacent family farmsteads or successive generations settling close to one another on the same productive ground.