Neolithic and Bronze Age Landscapes of North Mayo: Report 2011

The following season the team continued to extend the known walls further eastwards into Glenulra
townland. Hitherto the probing had only attempted to extend known walls where they had been
identified in cut away bogs. The new wall discovered at the end of the 1983 programme on the
summit of Céide hill had a different alignment to the Behy/Glenulra system of parallels. It was
decided to attempt a “blind probe” in a continuous transect eastwards from the summit of the ridge
down the eastern side of Céide hill which is the western side of Glenulra valley. A continuous probe
at 30 cm intervals was carried out and the raised profiles of four new walls were discovered. Once
located, the walls were extended to either side of the transect by the normal method. The new
walls were long relatively straight walls and were parallel to the wall on the summit. But whereas
the walls on the western side of Céide hill were aligned on the direction of the spur of this hill the
new walls on the eastern side of the hill were very much out of kilter with the natural axes of the
terrain. Parallel field boundaries whether ancient or modern tend to follow one of the natural axes,
either running up slope or along the contours but in contrast these new walls ran diagonally across
the slope of the hill.
Céide hill which is a spur off Maumkeogh runs in a northerly direction. Ballyknock hill which forms
the eastern side of Glenulra valley is on a different axis to Céide hill running in a more northeasterly
direction. As well as Glenulra townland, a number of other townlands including Muingelly,
Doonfeeney Upper, Doonfeeney Lower, Ballyknock and Sralagagh also extend onto the hill. Most of
the bog has been cut off Ballyknock hill and walls had been observed at a number of different
locations there. Sralagagh townland which lies to the south of Glenulra and west of Ballyknock has
very extensive turbary allotments in bog up to four metres in depth and the location of these walls
had been published in 1983. In 1987 the probing programme concentrated on this hill. Most of the
earlier observations of pre-bog walls now integrated into a pattern of new parallels aligned in this
case on the alignment of Ballyknock hill or else enclosing the top of the hill. One long parallel ran
westwards from the summit of Ballyknock hill into the deep Sralagagh bog. It could be seen from
the plan that the Sralagagh Ballyknock wall was in harmony with the direction of the land and was
also parallel to the walls on the western side of the valley on Céide hill. If those fields were indeed
part of a parallel system it had clearly originated on the Ballyknock Sralagagh side of the valley. If
this interpretation was correct there should be other walls down the east side of Glenulra valley and
those walls should be parallel to those already mapped. A series of blind probes from the Sralagagh
townland boundary down the eastern side of Glenulra valley did locate a number of walls and as
predicted they were parallel to both the Céide hill east and the Sralagagh walls.
To the south and southeast of Ballyknock there are extensive tracts of forest but beyond that walls
were identified in the townlands of Aghoo, Ballinglen and Ballykinletteragh. One season of probing
and mapping in those townlands has identified a less regular system of boundaries. While these
walls to the south east of Ballyknock may eventually be integrated into the main Céide Fields
complex their closer proximity to the field systems on Suí Finn across the Ballinglen valley and less
than a kilometre away suggest that they should be grouped directly with them.
By the end of the 1980s a problem of nomenclature had arisen. The Behy/Glenulra field system was
an appropriate name when the fields were confined to the two townlands but the extension onto
Ballyknock hill meant the fields forming an integrated system had now been extended into a number
of other townlands as well. At this time plans were getting under way for the economic exploitation
of the research in a major tourism initiative in Co. Mayo. The research work had commenced on
120