Settlement deserted - medieval, Kilkeeran, Co. Mayo

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Settlement deserted – medieval, Kilkeeran, Co. Mayo

Around the base of a medieval tower house in Kilkeeran, County Mayo, the ground holds the faint outline of a community that has long since vanished.

Low earthen banks and the remnants of old field walls survive on several sides of the tower, the kind of quiet, easily overlooked features that reward a careful eye rather than a casual glance.

Tower houses were fortified residential structures built predominantly between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, common across Ireland as seats of local lordship. That one stood here at Kilkeeran is notable enough, but what makes the site particularly interesting is what appears to have clustered around it. Lavelle, writing in 1994, noted the remains of what may have been an associated medieval village, with surviving field banks and walls extending to the east, south, southwest, and west of the tower. A village in the shadow of a local lord's fortified residence was a typical arrangement in medieval Ireland, and the pattern of settlement here fits that model, though the sparse remains leave the picture incomplete.

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Pete F
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