Enclosure, Carrowmore, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Carrowmore, Co. Sligo

Carrowmore in County Sligo is already one of the most densely packed megalithic landscapes in Ireland, so it takes something genuinely elusive to stand out there.

This particular site manages that distinction by being, in practical terms, almost entirely absent. What is recorded is not a monument but the ghost of one: a faint circular feature spotted on an Ordnance Survey aerial photograph, tentatively classified as an enclosure, and left largely unresolved ever since.

The feature first entered the official record in 1989, listed as a potential site on the basis of that single aerial image. A further listing followed in 1995. Circular enclosures of the kind tentatively suggested here can take many forms in the Irish archaeological landscape, from ringforts used as enclosed farmsteads in the early medieval period to prehistoric ditched enclosures of entirely different function, and without ground investigation it is impossible to say which, if either, applies. What is particularly striking is that the feature has not been visible on any more recent aerial imagery, whether from Ordnance Survey Ireland, Bing Maps, or Google Earth. It may have been obscured by changes in land use or vegetation, or it may never have been quite what it appeared. The interpretation remains, in the careful phrasing of the record itself, purely tentative.

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Pete F
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