Enclosure, Larganboy, Co. Mayo

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Larganboy, Co. Mayo

On a ridge top in Larganboy, Co. Mayo, there is a monument that exists almost entirely on paper.

A small circular enclosure, somewhere between ten and fifteen metres across, was carefully recorded by the Ordnance Survey in 1838. By 1917 it still warranted a mark on the map, rendered this time as a hachured circle, the cartographic shorthand for a raised or earthen feature. Today, nothing is visible at ground level. The ridge holds its shape, the views carry across a narrow valley to the south-west and over rolling pasture to the north-east, but whatever once sat at the break of slope has been absorbed entirely into the landscape.

The enclosure's small diameter and its position on high ground are the details that make it archaeologically interesting. Most raths, the circular earthen enclosures that served as farmsteads during the early medieval period in Ireland, tend to be larger and positioned with defensibility or agricultural convenience in mind. Something this compact, placed on a ridge top rather than in a sheltered hollow, fits less comfortably into that category. The more likely interpretation is that it was a barrow, a burial mound, a form of monument with deep prehistoric roots across Ireland and Britain. A possible rath has been recorded roughly 150 metres to the north, which means the ridge may once have carried more than one structure, though the relationship between them, if any, is unknown.

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Pete F
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