Mound

The National Monuments Service's description

On a machair plain on the SE side of Inishkea North, 20m N of the rocky shoreline and 150m S of a larger mound known as Bailey Mór (MA023-014003-). There is an ecclesiastical site (MA023-014033001-) c. 50m to NE and a graveyard (MA023-0140012-) 100m to SE.
Known in local tradition as ‘Bailey Beag’, it consists of a conical steep-sided mound (diam. c. 23m; H 3.8m), which appears at its core to be a sand hill. The 1838 and 1920 OS 6-inch maps depict it as larger in diameter than the surviving remains, suggesting that erosion has greatly diminished it.
The grass-covered slopes have a rough cladding of large stones and slabs (some up to 1m in max. dim.) and the narrow summit is crowned with a small, low cairn of stones (c. 3m N-S; c. 3m E-W; H 0.6-0.7m). Most of the stones on the summit appear loose but a few are set upright, possibly part of a structure, perhaps remnants of the house (MA023-014032-) which Henry (1945, 140; House I) noted here in the late 1930’s. A thin scatter of seashells, likely to be occupation debris, is visible on the top and slopes of the mound where grass cover has eroded. It is a National Monument in state ownership (no. 379).

Attached images:
MA023-014031-_01.JPG Viewed from S with Bailey Mór mound (MA023-014003-) in background
MA023-014031-_02.JPG Viewed from SW

Compiled by: Jane O’Shaughnessy

Date of upload: 27 July 2023

References

Henry, F. 1945 Remains of the Early Christian Period on Inishkea North, Co. Mayo. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 75, 127-55.