Enclosure, Cregmore, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Cregmore, Co. Mayo

In a quiet stretch of undulating pasture near Cregmore in County Mayo, a low earthen bank traces an almost perfect circle in the ground.

The enclosure measures roughly 26 metres north to south and 27 metres east to west, the bank rising just over half a metre above the surrounding land. It is easy to walk past without registering what you are looking at, and that is part of what makes it interesting. Someone, at some point in the past, went to considerable effort to define this space, and the land has simply carried on around it.

Enclosures of this type are common across Ireland, though their precise origins and purposes vary considerably. Some are the remains of early medieval ringforts, which served as farmsteads enclosed for security and to contain livestock. Others were used for agriculture, ritual, or as boundaries of some kind. The interior of this particular example preserves evidence of cultivation ridges, the raised parallel beds associated with historic tillage, suggesting the enclosed ground was worked at some stage. On the eastern side, a later stone field fence has been laid directly over the original bank, a detail that quietly illustrates how successive generations reused and adapted boundaries already present in the landscape rather than starting from scratch. The enclosure was recorded as part of an archaeological survey of the Ballinrobe district, including the areas around Lough Mask and Lough Carra, compiled by D. Lavelle and published in 1994.

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Pete F
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