Barrow (Ring Barrow), Glen (Clanwilliam By.), Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Barrows
A field boundary cuts clean through the northern half of a prehistoric burial mound in County Limerick, effectively erasing part of a monument that was itself unknown to cartographers for generations.
The ring-barrow in the townland of Glen, in the barony of Clanwilliam, never appeared on the historic Ordnance Survey Ireland maps that charted the Irish landscape so thoroughly during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its existence only came to light through aerial photography, and even now it survives in a compromised state, bisected by a modern field division that shows little regard for what lies beneath the soil.
A ring-barrow is a low circular burial mound enclosed by a surrounding ditch and sometimes an outer bank, typically associated with Bronze Age or early Iron Age funerary practice. This particular example, catalogued as Bruff 246 during a 1986 aerial photographic survey of the Bruff area, has an external diameter of approximately 8.5 metres. It sits roughly 130 metres northeast of the townland boundary with Knocknacrohy, on rough hillside pasture that has probably kept the site from more aggressive agricultural disturbance. What gives it added significance is its setting: it forms part of a cemetery of five ring-barrows, the others spaced roughly 90 metres apart across the same landscape. Two further enclosures, most likely ringforts, the circular enclosed farmsteads common from the early medieval period, lie within 55 metres to the south and 20 metres to the east, suggesting the area attracted successive generations of activity across a considerable span of time. The site was compiled for the record by Edmond O'Donovan, with the entry uploaded in September 2020.
The monument is not signposted and sits on private farmland, so access would require the landowner's permission. Because it was identified through aerial photography rather than ground survey, visitors should not expect a dramatically visible earthwork; much of what remains is subtle, and the northern portion of the ring has been lost to the field boundary entirely. The most useful orientation tool is the aerial imagery available through Google Earth, where the truncated ring is visible on images taken as recently as November 2018. Anyone with a particular interest in prehistoric funerary landscapes might find the broader cluster of barrows worth studying from above before attempting any ground-level visit.