Barrow (Ditch barrow), Curragh, Co. Kildare
Co. Kildare |
Barrows
On the Curragh, the wide limestone plain in Co. Kildare long associated with horse racing and military training, a modest earthwork sits in the grass that most people would walk past without a second glance. It is a ditch barrow, a type of prehistoric burial monument defined not by a raised mound but by a surrounding fosse, which is simply a rock-cut or earthen ditch, with the enclosed area left slightly elevated above the surrounding ground. What makes this example quietly unusual is the absence of any visible external bank: in most comparable monuments the material dug from the fosse was piled outward to form a low rim, but here no such feature survives, if it ever existed.
The site was recorded by Seán P. Ó Ríordáin, whose 1950 study catalogued it as Site M and included a scaled cross-section running north to south. The measurements he recorded are modest: the central domed platform is roughly 3.4 metres in diameter, while the fosse brings the overall diameter of the monument to approximately 5.8 metres. That is a small footprint for a monument that may once have marked a burial, a boundary, or some ceremonial function now impossible to recover. The Curragh itself preserves an unusual density of archaeological features beneath its close-cropped sward, partly because the plain has never been extensively ploughed, which makes the survival of even low earthworks more likely here than in much of the surrounding lowland.