Enclosure, Carrowkeribly, Co. Mayo

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Carrowkeribly, Co. Mayo

In a field in Carrowkeribly, County Mayo, there is an ancient enclosure that no longer exists above ground, yet has not entirely disappeared.

The earthwork was levelled during land reclamation in late 1975 or early 1976, and the pasture that replaced it gives no indication that anything once stood there. What remains is a faint circular cropmark, roughly 35 metres in diameter, visible only in aerial photographs, where the buried remnants of the old boundary still influence the soil and the growth of grass above it.

The site had a documented history before it was lost. The Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1838 recorded it as a roughly D-shaped embanked enclosure, the kind of enclosed space, defined by earthen banks, that was common across early medieval Ireland and used variously for settlement, farming, or ritual purposes. By the time the 1930 mapping revised the record, its shape had shifted in representation to an oblong measuring roughly 35 to 40 metres northeast to southwest and about 25 metres northwest to southeast, its edges already trimmed by field boundaries on the northwest and northeast. It sat on a slight rise in gently undulating terrain, bordered to the west and northwest by an extensive tract of bog, with Carrowkeribly Lough lying approximately 450 metres to the south. That positioning on elevated ground, with wetland to one side and open water nearby, is a pattern that recurs across prehistoric and early historic sites throughout the west of Ireland, suggesting the location was chosen deliberately, though the enclosure's precise age and function were never recorded before it was removed.

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Pete F
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