It sits on the map with a designation and a grid reference, a named thing, but one that has not yet been given a story anyone can easily read.

Enclosures of this kind are common across the Irish landscape, and that commonness is itself worth pausing on. They range from prehistoric ringforts, which were enclosed farmsteads typically defined by an earthen bank and ditch, to later medieval cattle enclosures or monastic precincts. In a county like Mayo, with its dense palimpsest of early settlement, an enclosure in a townland like Gowlaun could belong to almost any period from the Bronze Age onward. Without the underlying record being accessible, it is not possible to say which.