Settlement cluster in Rathbaun (tirawley By., Kilbelfad Par.)

Rathbaun held a small cluster of houses during the 1656-8 Down Survey, marking one of the earliest written recognitions that people lived, worked and endured together in this part of Mayo. The exact spot has slipped from modern knowledge, but the survey preserved the fact of human presence when much elsewhere was being reduced to empty land. That brief record turns a forgotten field into a place where neighbours once stood, named the soil and continued living through upheaval.