Enclosure, Kildun More, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Enclosures
In the townland of Kildun More, in County Mayo, there is a feature in the landscape recorded simply as an enclosure.
That word, so plain on paper, covers an enormous range of possibilities in the Irish archaeological record. An enclosure might be a ringfort, the circular earthen or stone-walled farmstead used by early medieval families between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. It might be a cashel, the same idea built in drystone rather than earth. It might be a ceremonial enclosure of far greater antiquity, a boundary that once defined a space set apart from the ordinary world. Without further detail, the designation itself becomes the most interesting thing about it.
Kildun More sits in Mayo, a county whose landscape holds a disproportionate density of ancient settlement remains, from megalithic field systems preserved beneath blanket bog to early Christian enclosures clustered around long-vanished monasteries. The townland name itself may carry traces of older meaning, with the element "dun" suggesting a fort or defended place in Irish. Whether that reflects the enclosure now recorded there, or some earlier feature entirely absorbed into local memory and place-name, is the kind of question the site itself cannot yet answer.