Enclosure, Newcastle, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Newcastle, Co. Mayo

On a ridge above the Gweestion River in County Mayo, a circular enclosure once clear enough to be mapped has since slipped almost entirely from view.

The first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1838 recorded it plainly, a ring roughly 25 to 30 metres across sitting on a natural rise, but subsequent map editions dropped it altogether. Whether it was already fading by then, or simply deemed too ambiguous to mark, is not recorded. What remains on the ground today is fragmentary but legible if you know what you are looking for.

The enclosure appears to have been laid out to take advantage of the ridge's own topography, using a natural projection as part of its structure rather than working against the terrain. A stony scarp, the kind of low earthen or stone bank that would once have defined the circuit of such a feature, survives in a shallow arc running roughly east to west across about 33 metres of the southern side. It reaches 1.1 metres in height towards the south-east and rises to 2.6 metres at the south-west, where the natural slope drops away steeply and lends the bank much of its apparent bulk. A short stretch of the scarp retains a slightly raised outer lip, about two metres wide and only 15 centimetres high internally, which may represent the last physical trace of the enclosure's southern arc. A modern field fence crosses the ridge some seven metres to the north, and beyond it no trace of the original circuit survives. The enclosure's northern half, if it ever had a substantial bank, has been erased. Roughly 100 metres to the south-west lies what may have been a fording point on the Gweestion River, a detail that raises quiet questions about why this particular rise was chosen and what traffic it once overlooked.

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Pete F
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