Mound, Cuillaun, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Mound, Cuillaun, Co. Mayo

A low, sod-covered mound sitting just below the summit of a ridge in County Mayo went entirely unrecorded on Ordnance Survey maps from both 1837 and 1919, meaning it passed through nearly two centuries of cartographic attention without leaving a mark.

It only entered the official archaeological record in 1991, identified from an aerial photograph rather than any ground survey. That quiet invisibility is part of what makes it interesting: a structure that was presumably always there, in open pasture on a gentle south-facing slope, simply overlooked.

The mound itself is a roughly circular earthen and stone platform, measuring about 7.5 metres north to south and 7.4 metres east to west, rising to approximately one metre at its southern edge and half that at the north. Stones protrude unevenly around the perimeter, forming what might be described as a rough kerb, and the flat top carries a slight hollow to the east, with a single stone pushing up through the sod. Its precise function and date remain unestablished, but its setting and form place it in meaningful company. Two bowl barrows, a type of prehistoric burial mound characterised by a rounded earthen dome, sit on the ridge summit to the west, roughly 140 metres and 200 metres away respectively. Whether this mound shares their funerary purpose, predates them, or served some entirely different function is not yet known. What the aerial photograph could not convey, and what standing on the slope makes immediately apparent, is the reach of the view: Croagh Patrick on the far horizon to the south-west, Nephin Mountain to the west, and the ridge running east to west as a kind of natural spine through the landscape.

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Pete F
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