Barrow, Ballinlee, Co. Limerick

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Barrows

Barrow, Ballinlee, Co. Limerick

A prehistoric burial mound sitting in rough County Limerick pasture, unrecorded on Ordnance Survey historic maps and invisible to anyone walking past, was effectively brought into existence as an archaeological site by a gas pipeline.

That is the quiet irony of this barrow near Ballinlee: it took the aerial photography commissioned for the Bórd Gáis Éireann Curraleigh-Limerick gas pipeline, shot on 3 November 1984, to flag it as a possible site at all. A barrow, in this context, is a prehistoric earthen burial mound, typically circular in plan, and often surviving as a low grassed-over rise that can be almost indistinguishable from the surrounding ground when viewed at eye level.

The site, recorded as Site No. 039138, sits roughly 208 metres west of the townland boundary with Ballygreenan. It is part of a cluster of three barrows, the nearest of which lies only ten metres to the west. That proximity is worth noting: barrows frequently occur in groups, and the clustering here suggests the area held some significance to the communities who used it, though the notes do not offer a date or cultural attribution. What confirmed the site's presence more recently was a cropmark, the faint shadow a buried structure can cast on overlying vegetation when soil moisture varies, visible on an Ordnance Survey Ireland orthophoto taken between 2005 and 2012, and again on a Google Earth image dated 20 September 2020. The record was compiled by Fiona Rooney and uploaded to the national database in April 2021.

Because the site is in private rough pasture and carries no marker on historic mapping, there is nothing to guide a casual visitor to the spot. The cropmark itself, which appears as a small circular earthwork from above, would not be discernible from ground level under most conditions. Anyone with a serious interest would do better to consult the aerial imagery cited in the record, or approach the National Monuments Service for guidance, rather than attempt to locate the mound by eye in an unmarked field. The broader landscape around Ballygreenan may reward a closer look on those same aerial platforms, given that two further barrows in the cluster remain nearby.

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