Souterrain, Cloonta, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Settlement Sites

Souterrain, Cloonta, Co. Mayo

There is nothing to see at this particular spot in Cloonta, County Mayo, and that is precisely what makes it worth knowing about.

Somewhere beneath an ordinary field of pasture, running alongside a NNE to SSW field bank at the base of a south-east-facing slope, lies a souterrain that has been deliberately closed up. No stonework breaks the surface, no depression marks the ground. The site exists, for now, almost entirely as memory.

A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, typically associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, and thought to have served for storage, refuge, or both. They are common enough across the country, but most known examples retain at least some visible trace. Here, local knowledge is the only evidence that one exists at all. It was closed up at some point in the past, the precise circumstances unrecorded. About 130 metres to the north-east lies what may be an enclosure, the kind of defined boundary that often accompanied early settlement, suggesting this quiet corner of Mayo may once have been a good deal more occupied than it appears today.

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Pete F
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