Enclosure, Meeltran, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Meeltran, Co. Mayo

Beneath a modern house and garden in Meeltran, County Mayo, there may once have stood a circular enclosure that has since vanished so completely that no trace of it remains at ground level.

The only evidence it ever existed is a mark on a map.

The 1838 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, the first systematic large-scale survey of Ireland and an extraordinarily detailed record of the landscape at that moment, shows a circular enclosure roughly twenty to twenty-five metres in diameter in this area of undulating grassland, close to the Glore River to the east. Circular enclosures of this kind are common features of the Irish countryside and typically date from the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1200 AD. Often called raths or ringforts, they were usually the enclosed farmsteads of single farming families, defined by an earthen bank and ditch. By the time later map editions were produced, this one had already disappeared from the cartographic record entirely. Whether it was levelled for agricultural use, built over, or simply too degraded to map by then is unknown. A modern house and garden now occupies the site, making any future investigation unlikely.

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Pete F
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