Enclosure, Summerhill, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Enclosures
On a patch of elevated pasture near Summerhill in Co. Mayo, there is nothing to see.
That is, in a sense, the point. An oval enclosure once sat here, measuring roughly 20 metres east to west and 25 metres north to south, occupying ground with long views stretching south-west to north-west across the surrounding landscape. At some point between the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth, it was levelled entirely, leaving no visible trace at ground level.
The enclosure appears clearly on the six-inch Ordnance Survey map of 1838, and again on the later 25-inch plan, drawn as a distinct oval feature. Enclosures of this kind are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, typically representing the remains of early medieval farmsteads or settlement sites, where a circular or oval bank and ditch once defined a domestic space. By the time the revised six-inch map was produced in 1931, this one had disappeared from the cartographic record altogether, suggesting it was removed sometime in the intervening decades, most likely through agricultural improvement or land clearance.
