Field system, Ellistronparks, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Ritual/Ceremonial
In rough pasture just fifty metres north of a tower house in Ellistronparks, County Mayo, the ground holds the ghost of a community that once gathered close to the walls of a fortified residence.
Aerial photography has revealed what the eye at ground level might easily miss: a series of earthen banks dividing the land into distinct fields, alongside what appear to be the footprints of hut sites, the whole arrangement suggesting not merely agricultural management but the organised life of a settlement.
Tower houses, the compact fortified stone residences built in considerable numbers across Ireland from the fourteenth century onwards, were rarely isolated structures. They typically anchored small communities, and the field system at Ellistronparks appears to fit that pattern. The earthen banks visible from the air point to land division and cultivation tied to the tower house immediately to the south. Towards the northern edge of this system there is also a circular enclosure, a form of boundary feature found in many Irish landscapes across different periods, whose precise function here is not firmly established. The survey of Ballinrobe and its surrounding district, compiled by D. Lavelle for the Lough Mask and Lough Carra Tourist Development Association in 1994, brought this cluster of features together and noted the likely connection between the field system and the tower house, without resolving every question the site raises.