Mound, Reask, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Mound, Reask, Co. Mayo

On a hilltop in Reask, County Mayo, there is a low earthen mound that has never appeared on any edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps.

That absence is itself a small puzzle. The OS six-inch series, produced from the 1830s onwards, was remarkably thorough in recording the Irish landscape, and features far less conspicuous than this one routinely made it onto the sheets. Whatever this mound is, it slipped through unrecorded, and has sat quietly in improved pasture ever since, commanding extensive views in every direction.

The mound is sub-rectangular and flat-topped, measuring roughly 11.5 metres on its northwest to southeast axis and about 10 metres across. It stands between 0.7 and 1.2 metres high, the greater height at the northwest end, which gives the surface a very slight tilt and creates what reads, at first glance, as a shallow central dip. Large stones protrude at irregular intervals from its sides, suggesting something more deliberate beneath the turf than a simple accumulation of field clearance. A field fence that once ran along the northwest side of the mound has since been removed. Without excavation, the mound's origins and purpose remain open. It could be a burial monument, a platform of some kind, or something that resists easy categorisation, which may be precisely why it was never formally mapped.

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Pete F
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