Mound, Forthill, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Mound, Forthill, Co. Mayo

A small, roughly D-shaped mound sitting on a ridge in County Mayo pastureland does not, at first glance, announce itself as anything remarkable.

It is only about 0.7 metres high and measures a little over seven metres at its longest point. Yet its position is deliberate. The ground falls steeply to the south, opening out long views across low, gently rolling grassland and, further round to the south-east, across a stretch of bog. Whoever raised this feature, or made use of it, chose the spot with some care.

The mound has a flat top with a slightly concave profile, created by a raised stony rim running around the edge. At its north-north-west to north side, large stones protrude from the turf to form what looks like a rough outer kerb or facing. A sandpit, cut into the western side, has exposed something of the mound's internal make-up: beneath a thin upper layer of jumbled small and medium stones lies a band of brown sandy soil containing occasional small stones, pebbles, and fragments of charcoal. This rests on what appears to be natural orange boulder clay. The charcoal is intriguing, hinting at burning activity of some kind, though its date and purpose are not recorded. Running along the eastern side of the mound is a low, linear feature, about a metre wide and 0.4 metres high, which does not extend beyond the mound itself and may be the remnant of a north-south field boundary. The mound sits in a landscape with other earthworks nearby: a rath, the circular enclosure typical of early medieval Irish farmsteads, lies roughly 200 metres to the north-west, and a further enclosure sits about the same distance to the south-west. Whether this small platform relates to that broader pattern of settlement, or belongs to an entirely different phase of activity, remains an open question.

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Pete F
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