Enclosure, Cloonaghmanagh, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Cloonaghmanagh, Co. Mayo

In the rough pasture of Cloonaghmanagh, a low circular wall sits almost entirely swallowed by ferns, its purpose unresolved and its age unknown.

That ambiguity is precisely what makes it worth attention. The structure is a subcircular enclosure roughly 19 metres across, bounded by a drystone wall built without coursing from large, rounded stones. A gap of about 1.5 metres on the east-south-east side provides the only way in. It does not appear on Ordnance Survey maps from either 1838 or 1919, which places a ceiling on how ancient it is likely to be, or at least on how long it was considered significant enough to record.

The wall itself, standing roughly 0.7 metres high and not much more than that in width, looks very much like the ordinary field walls nearby, which does little to clarify matters. A cashel, the Irish term for a stone-walled enclosure typically of early medieval date and often associated with a farmstead or defended settlement, would usually show more deliberate construction and a more pronounced interior platform. This enclosure has neither. The interior is flat, dry underfoot, and carpeted in grass, ferns, and yellow flag iris, that tall wetland plant whose presence here signals proximity to water. The stream running about 20 metres to the south keeps the ground just outside the southern wall noticeably damp, while the interior remains firm. Whether the enclosure held animals, marked a boundary, or served some other purpose entirely is not known. Its date is tentatively described as post-medieval, possibly even relatively recent. About 200 metres to the north-east sits what may be an actual cashel, and the contrast between a definitively classified monument and this unnamed, unresolved ring of stones makes the latter quietly compelling.

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Pete F
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