Enclosure, Carrownaglogh, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Enclosures
In the rough, stony pasture of Carrownaglogh in County Mayo, a circular enclosure recorded by the Ordnance Survey in the late 1830s had, within roughly eighty years, effectively ceased to exist, at least as far as any map was concerned.
The eastern half has vanished entirely, absorbed into the surrounding landscape. What remains is a D-shaped remnant, the curved western arc of what was once a complete circle approximately fifteen metres across, its low stone bank now softened under a covering of sod.
The first Ordnance Survey of Ireland, conducted between 1837 and 1838, captured the enclosure clearly on its six-inch maps, showing it as a circular feature incorporated into a roughly north-to-south field wall, a common enough arrangement where older structures were simply folded into later agricultural boundaries. By the time the 1922 edition was produced, it had dropped off the record altogether. The surviving western arc measures roughly 11.6 metres north to south and 7.8 metres east to west, with a bank about 2.4 metres wide and just over half a metre high on both its interior and exterior faces. The straight eastern edge of what survives is now defined by a later field wall running roughly north-northeast to south-southwest. Enclosures of this general type, circular or sub-circular earthworks defined by a bank and sometimes a ditch, are found widely across Ireland and may have served as farmsteads, animal enclosures, or settlement sites, though without excavation the date and function of this particular example remain unknown.
The site sits at the eastern end of a low rise in what is still rough, stony grazing land, and the surviving bank is unobtrusive enough that it could easily be passed over without prior knowledge of what to look for. The curving line of sod-covered stone tracing a partial arc across the pasture is, at this point, all that physically marks something that was once complete enough to be worth mapping.