Barrow, Corboy, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Barrows

Barrow, Corboy, Co. Longford

In a field of wet, low-lying pasture in County Longford, a subtly raised circle of earth sits close enough to a neighbouring prehistoric enclosure to suggest a relationship, yet distinct enough to be classified separately.

This is a barrow, the general term for a burial mound of prehistoric or early medieval date, and its presence in this particular corner of Corboy is easy to miss. The ground here is soft and the feature barely shoulders itself above the surrounding grassland, but it is there, patient and unannounced.

The mound measures just over eight metres in diameter at its base and is partially enclosed by a low, much-worn bank of earth and stone, running from the south-east around through the south and west. The bank, where it survives, reaches no more than a quarter of a metre in height and sits roughly three and a half metres wide, suggesting that whatever once defined this monument more firmly has been considerably reduced by time, agriculture, and the persistent damp of the ground. On the other side, the mound is defined by a scarp, a natural-looking edge or drop in the ground, here standing about seventy centimetres high. There is no surviving fosse, the drainage ditch that typically rings an earthen enclosure, nor any outer bank beyond what remains. A slight depression in the scarp on the north-north-west side may be the ghost of an original entrance. Roughly thirty-five metres to the north lies a rath, a ringfort of the early medieval period, and the proximity of the two monuments raises quiet questions about how they might have been understood in relation to one another by the communities that built or used them.

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Pete F
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