Earthwork

The National Monuments Service's description

In pasture, located on a prominent rise bordered at NE by a stream gully, straddling the townland boundary. There are broad views NW and SE. There is a church (MA102-044001-) and graveyard (MA102-044002-) c. 300m to N.
Knox (1911, 325-7) identified a series of earthworks straddling the townland boundary between Tulrohaun and Carrowneden as the location of a castle (MA102-044001-) mentioned in the 1838 OS Letters but is not marked on the OS 6-inch maps. He suggested it was a MacCostello castle dating to the sixteenth century. He described and drew a plan of a series of contiguous of low, subrectangular earthen platforms or baileys. These were defined by scarps which were originally stone faced, the stones of which he stated had been largely robbed out within living memory. Incorporated into the earthworks he noted a mound (c. 9m x 9m, at base; H c. 2.5m), on which he considered the stone castle once stood.
On the 1838 OS 6-inch map, a small cluster of buildings or houses, with associated subrectangular field and garden plots, is shown at this location, with a trackway leading from the settlement towards a Roman Catholic chapel c. 100m to SW. By the time of the 1916 edition, there buildings are no longer shown but two adjacent subrectangular field plots are recorded in hachured outline, incorporated into the townland boundary on their S side. The earthworks are also recorded in an aerial photograph (SMR file: GSI M54-5, Roll 207, pr. 21).
A series of low, grass-covered subrectangular earthworks can still be traced at ground level to N of the Tulrohaun/Carrowneden townland boundary, where they broadly conform to the hachured features shown on the 1916 OS 6-inch map and possibly equate with some of the earthworks illustrated in Knox’s plan. A roughly square mound (9m NNE–SSW; 9m WNW–ESE; max H 1.6m at NNE), incorporated into the townland boundary wall on the S and W sides, may correspond to the feature identified by Knox as the castle mound. Immediately to the E, N and W of the mound, low scarps define level subrectangular plots, varying in size from c. 16m x 20m to c. 45m x 70m. Remnants of stone facing or walling are evident in parts, and relict cultivation ridges are visible within the plots.
To S of the townland boundary, land reclamation has reduced the earthworks to a few ephemeral undulations, but a block of displaced masonry is incorporated into a N-S field wall at a point c. 20m S of the townland boundary and directly S of the possible castle mound.
Much of the visible remains probably relate to the settlement/farmstead shown on the 1838 map; to what extend they may represent the modified remains of an earlier castle settlement is unclear.

Compiled by: Jane O’Shaughnessy

Date of upload: 27 September 2022

References

Knox, H.T. 1911 Some Connacht Raths and Motes. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 41, 205-40, 301-42.

O'Flanagan, Rev. M. (Compiler) 1927 Letters containing information relative to the antiquities of the county of Mayo collected during the progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1838. Bray.