Field boundary, Tawnatruffaun, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Tawnatruffaun, Co. Sligo

On a blanket bog-covered ridge in north County Sligo, somewhere between the Easkey River valley to the east and the small stream valley of the Straffaun Ioe to the west, there may or may not be an ancient field boundary.

That uncertainty is precisely what makes this place interesting. A loose, gapped line of stones, barely breaking the surface of the bog, stretches for roughly twenty metres on a roughly north-north-east to south-south-west orientation. The gaps between individual stones range from twenty centimetres to over a metre. It is not much to look at, and nobody is entirely sure what it is.

The site first appeared in official records in 1995, listed as a pre-bog field system, meaning a field boundary that predates the formation of the blanket bog that now covers it. Blanket bog develops slowly over millennia, accumulating layers of peat across landscapes that were once farmed or grazed, and anything caught beneath it can survive in remarkable condition simply because the waterlogged, acidic environment inhibits decay. However, when an inspection was carried out in 2014, no trace of the field system turned up at the map coordinates originally given. The 1913 Ordnance Survey six-inch map shows the area as featureless, and it seems the 1995 coordinates were approximate at best. What the 2014 survey did find, in the north-east part of the field rather than the south-east, was that tentative scatter of stones, enough to suggest a wall of some kind once stood here, though not enough to confirm any wider system of enclosure. The origin of the original 1995 record remains unknown, with no fieldwork report to explain how or why it was logged.

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Pete F
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