Enclosure, Castlelucas, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Castlelucas, Co. Mayo

In the townland of Castlelucas in County Mayo, there is an enclosure.

That much is recorded. An enclosure, in the archaeological sense, is exactly what it sounds like: a defined area of ground set apart from its surroundings by a bank, ditch, wall, or some combination of these, and the term covers an enormous range of purposes and periods. Some enclosures were defensive, some ceremonial, some agricultural; some are prehistoric, others medieval. The category is broad precisely because the people who built them were many and various, and the landscape of Mayo holds examples from across thousands of years of human habitation.

Beyond the name and the county, the available record for this particular site is, for the moment, thin. It sits in a part of Ireland where enclosures are not uncommon, where ringforts and cashels, early ecclesiastical enclosures and later field systems have all left their marks on the ground. The townland name Castlelucas hints at some earlier structure in the vicinity, though the detail of what relationship, if any, the enclosure bears to whatever gave the place that name remains, for now, an open question rather than a settled answer.

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