Enclosure, Larganboy, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Larganboy, Co. Mayo

In the townland of Larganboy in County Mayo, an enclosure sits in the landscape, recorded and counted among Ireland's archaeological monuments yet largely silent in the documentary record.

Enclosures of this kind are among the most common, and most quietly enigmatic, features of the Irish countryside. The term covers a broad range of structures, from the circular earthen banks of a ringfort, which would have enclosed a farmstead in the early medieval period, to later field boundaries and enclosures of uncertain date and purpose. Without further detail, Larganboy's example holds its history close.

Mayo is a county dense with prehistoric and early medieval remains, its boglands and upland pastures preserving earthworks that elsewhere were long ago levelled by cultivation. A named enclosure in a townland like Larganboy, a placename with roots in the Irish for a small hollow or ridge, is likely one of thousands of such features that survive as low earthen banks or slight depressions, visible to a careful eye on the ground or from aerial survey, but rarely excavated and rarely discussed. The formal record exists, but the detail behind it remains, for now, out of general reach.

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