The Céide Fields: One of the Jewels of the West of Ireland

The Céide Fields, situated west of Ballycastle in north Mayo, is one of the jewels in the West of Ireland. They contain the most extensive Stone Age site and the oldest known field systems in the world. The area is a 1,500 hectare archaeological site of long parallel stone walls divided by other walls into field-systems, together with enclosures and tombs, dating from over 5,500 years ago, which have been preserved beneath blanket bog. The area includes Behy and Glenulra as well as several surrounding townlands extending over many square kilometres.

The blanket bog, which still covers parts of Ireland, developed from the late third millennium BC onwards, eventually covered the field systems and monuments of the early farmers who arrived in Ireland during the period from 4000 to 2400 BC. This pre-bog landscape is being revealed in modern times as the peat is cut away. The significance of this Stone Age agricultural landscape was first identified by a local school teacher, Patrick Caulfield (1903-1988), in the 1930s while cutting turf. He wrote to the Director of the National Museum on 15 December 1934, stating that there were ‘cromlechs, stone circles, old graves, forts and what I think must have been ancient pathways or boundary fences beneath the bog’. Years later, beginning in 1969, Dr Seamas Caulfield, Patrick’s son, and others carried out extensive excavations on this landscape identifying the huge site we know today. While generations of farmers in Europe altered the boundaries of their fields over time, the Céide Fields were not touched since they disappeared under the growing bog a couple of millennia ago. There are a number of places on the local landscape which were free of bog until at least the Bronze Age. The Céide Fields, with a dispersed settlement pattern, provide a valuable insight into this fascinating ancient farming civilisation. The flora of the fields is also of huge interest.

The amazing geology, archaeology, botany and wildlife of this region of North Mayo is interpreted by guides at the multi-award winning Céide Fields Visitors' Centre. Guided tours of a section of the Céide Fields are also provided. The Centre, a part-limestone, part peat-clad pyramid-shaped building, was opened on 28 May 1993. The three-tier building has a glass apex so that visitors can enjoy a view of the Céide Fields, the amazing local cliffs and panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean. There are fifty peat-clad external steps on three sides of the building, each step representing a hundred years of the five thousand years since farmers toiled in this area. A trunk of a 5,000 year-old bog pine stands inside the entrance, where there is a reconstruction of the house site from a local excavated court tomb from that era. The ground floor focuses on archaeology and flora, and the mezzanine area above it on geology. The centre, with more than half of it underground so as not to intrude on the landscape, has an auditorium for lectures, an audio-visual presentation, and exhibition displays to aid interpretation. The Céide Fields Visitors' Centre and the surrounding area are special treats for visitors to north Mayo.

Exploring Mayo by Bernard O’Hara is now available Worldwide as an eBook for the amazon Kindle application.

The print version of Bernard O’Hara’s book Exploring Mayo can be obtained by contacting www.mayobooks.ie.

www.mayobooks.ie also sell the print versions of Killasser - Heritage of a Mayo Parish , Anseo and Davitt.

Bernard O'Hara's book entitled Killasser: Heritage of a Mayo Parish is now on sale in the USA and UK as a paperback book at amazon.com, amazon.co.uk or Barnes and Noble

It is also available as an eBook from the Apple iBookstore (for reading on iPad and iPhone), from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (Kindle & Kindle Fire) and from Barnesandnoble.com (Nook tablet and eReader).

An earlier publication, a concise biography of Michael Davitt, entitled Davitt by Bernard O’Hara published in 2006 by Mayo County Council , is now available as Davitt: Irish Patriot and Father of the Land League by Bernard O’Hara, which was published in the USA by Tudor Gate Press (www.tudorgatepress.com) and is available from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. It can be obtained as an eBook from the Apple iBookstore (for reading on iPad and iPhone), from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (Kindle & Kindle Fire) and from Barnesandnoble.com (Nook tablet and eReader).