Barrow (Ring Barrow), Fethard, Co. Tipperary

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Barrows

Barrow (Ring Barrow), Fethard, Co. Tipperary

A ring barrow sits quietly in a corner of a pasture field near Fethard, Co. Tipperary, most likely unnoticed by anyone who hasn't been looking for it.

It was not stumbled upon by a walker or flagged up during a ground survey; it came to light through aerial photography, which is often how these subtly expressed earthworks are found, their low profiles only resolving into legible shapes when seen from above.

A ring barrow is a prehistoric funerary monument, typically Bronze Age in origin, consisting of a central burial area enclosed by a circular ditch and sometimes a surrounding bank. This example measures ten metres in diameter and is considered well preserved. The defining feature is an internal fosse, a term for a shallow ditch cut into the ground, here around 3.8 metres wide and between 0.1 and 0.2 metres deep at its base. Beyond it sits a slight outer bank, sometimes called a lip, which rises only around 0.3 metres above the interior on its inner face. The interior itself slopes gently down toward the fosse rather than sitting flat, which gives the monument a faint bowl-like character at ground level. These are modest dimensions, and the whole feature could easily be mistaken for a natural undulation in the field surface, which is precisely why so many similar monuments have been lost to ploughing or development without ever being recognised.

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Pete F
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