Enclosure (Large), Aghadiffin, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Enclosures

Enclosure (Large), Aghadiffin, Co. Mayo

In the level grassland of Aghadiffin, on the Mayo side of the county boundary with Roscommon, a large oval outline sits quietly in the landscape, most of it indistinguishable at a glance from ordinary pasture.

It measures roughly 110 metres on its longest axis and about 100 metres across, making it a substantial feature by any measure, yet its defining edge has been reduced almost to nothing: a slight curving rise in the ground, a band of rougher vegetation, a low scarp no more than half a metre high at its best-preserved stretch. This is what survives of what was once a bank or wall enclosing a considerable area of ground. The surrounding bog, particularly a large expanse about 350 metres to the west, gives the site its context, a patch of workable, level ground set apart within a wetter, more marginal landscape.

The enclosure is classed as large, a category that in Irish archaeology often prompts questions about function, since such features can represent anything from an early medieval settlement enclosure to a much older boundary of ceremonial or agricultural significance. The bank that once defined this one has been levelled thoroughly enough that its character is now difficult to read. Parts of the northern arc survive as a low curving scarp; elsewhere the line can only be followed as a gentle undulation or a change in vegetation. The south-eastern arc has disappeared entirely. A larch plantation covers the southern and south-western portion of the interior, though even beneath the trees the faint curvature of the old boundary can still be detected. Two modern property fences running on a north-west to south-east axis have cut across the enclosure, one bisecting the interior, the other clipping its northern edge, and a gap about three metres wide on the east-north-east side now serves as an entrance for farm machinery, a practical intrusion that has at least preserved the general line of the feature at that point.

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