Mound, Carrowconor, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Mound, Carrowconor, Co. Sligo

In a field of level pasture in County Sligo, there is a circular rise in the ground so modest it could easily be dismissed as a quirk of the terrain.

It measures no more than eight metres across and lifts just forty-five centimetres above the surrounding grass. What makes it worth a second look are the stones: four clustered at the south and south-east, one standing alone to the north-west, all of them likely the last surviving fragments of a kerb, the ring of stones that would once have defined the outer edge of a burial mound.

Kerbed mounds of this kind are generally associated with prehistoric funerary monuments, where a low earthen or stone cairn was edged with upright or recumbent stones to give it shape and boundary. Most examples in Ireland have been substantially disturbed over centuries of farming, stone-robbing, and general land clearance, which makes the survival of even a handful of kerb stones at Carrowconor quietly significant. The mound has no fosse, meaning there is no surrounding ditch, which distinguishes it from certain other monument types where a ditch was cut to provide the material for the raised centre. Its outline was visible enough to be recorded on both editions of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, which in practical terms means it was a recognisable feature in the landscape through at least the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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