Enclosure, Rockfield, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Rockfield, Co. Mayo

In the reclaimed pasture of Rockfield in County Mayo, a subtle depression in the earth marks something that the Ordnance Survey cartographers never recorded.

Despite multiple editions of the OS six-inch maps covering the area, this enclosure appears on none of them. Its existence came to light only through aerial photography, which revealed what ground-level observation alone might easily miss.

What survives is a subcircular area roughly 25 metres north to south and 22 metres east to west, its outline defined by a very slightly raised rim, most pronounced at the north-west. The interior sits fractionally lower than the surrounding ground, the kind of feature that reads as little more than a mild irregularity underfoot. Enclosures of this general type are among the more common yet least understood monuments in the Irish landscape; they may represent the remains of a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead used throughout the early medieval period, though without excavation the precise date and function of any individual example remains uncertain. About 15 metres to the north-west, a small domed rise of around 10 metres in diameter is thought to be a natural formation rather than anything man-made, though its proximity to the enclosure gives it an air of ambiguity that is hard to entirely shake.

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Pete F
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