Enclosure, Carrownaglogh, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Enclosures
On a ridge top in Carrownaglogh, on the edge of Mayo's interior, there is almost nothing left to see.
An enclosure that once measured roughly 25 metres across has been levelled into the pasture, and only a faint curving undulation along its western side hints that something was ever there. That near-total erasure is, in its own way, the most interesting thing about it.
The site appears clearly on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1837 to 1838 as a circular enclosure, and on the later 25-inch plan as a slightly oval form, enclosed by a bank, running approximately 25 metres northwest to southeast and 20 metres northeast to southwest. By the time the 1922 six-inch revision was made, only the northwestern arc was being recorded. At some point between those surveys and now, the remainder was lost, most likely to agricultural levelling. Enclosures of this kind, a broad category covering everything from early medieval settlement ringforts to stock enclosures of various periods, were once common across the Irish countryside, and a great many were removed during the intensive land improvement schemes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. What makes the Carrownaglogh example quietly worth noting is that it does not stand alone. Two further enclosures survive to its north, one roughly 20 metres away and another about 50 metres beyond that, forming a loose cluster along the same ridge. The Glenree River, also known as the Owenmore, runs approximately 180 metres to the south. Such groupings of enclosures, positioned on elevated ground near water, are a recurring pattern in the Irish landscape, and they raise questions about shared use, family groupings, or sequential occupation that the ground itself can no longer answer.