Enclosure, Knocknagulshy, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Knocknagulshy, Co. Mayo

On a ridge at Knocknagulshy in County Mayo, a low earthen bank traces the outline of an enclosure that has been quietly sitting in pasture for an unknown stretch of centuries.

It is modest in its dimensions, roughly 29 metres north to south and 24 metres east to west, forming a sub-rectangular shape that is neither perfectly geometric nor casually irregular. What gives it away as something deliberately made rather than a trick of the landscape is the combination of the bank itself, rising about 0.3 metres, and the external fosse, a shallow ditch running along the outside to a depth of around 0.4 metres. The bank is now tree-lined, which means the enclosure announces itself visually before the earthworks themselves become clear underfoot.

Enclosures of this general type are scattered across the Irish countryside and were constructed across a broad sweep of prehistory and the early medieval period. They served various purposes depending on their age and context, from stock management to settlement boundaries to ritual use, and without excavation it is rarely possible to assign a confident function or date to any single example. What can be said of this one is that earthen field boundaries adjoin it on both the northern and southern sides, suggesting the enclosure was once integrated into a wider agricultural landscape, or that later field systems grew up around it and incorporated it into their geometry. The ridge-top position is consistent with a preference, common across many periods of Irish land use, for slightly elevated ground that offered drainage and visibility in equal measure.

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Pete F
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