Barrow (Ring Barrow), Mountminnett, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Barrows

Barrow (Ring Barrow), Mountminnett, Co. Limerick

In a wet, rough field in County Limerick, a circular earthwork twelve metres across sits quietly in the landscape, invisible to Google Earth but detectable from higher up or drier seasons.

That inconsistency, appearing on one aerial survey and vanishing on another, is precisely what makes the ring barrow at Mountminnett worth paying attention to. It is the kind of monument that exists at the edge of perception, more rumour than ruin depending on the weather and the year.

A ring barrow is a burial monument of prehistoric origin, typically consisting of a low central mound enclosed by a circular ditch and outer bank, though the form varies considerably across Ireland. The Mountminnett example sits in pasture land about 55 metres east of the townland boundary with Tonteere and roughly 90 metres south of a watercourse, in ground that is described in the archaeological record as rough, wet, and water-shaped. It does not appear on any Ordnance Survey Ireland historic maps, which suggests it was either too eroded or too subtle to catch a cartographer's eye. What brought it to official notice was an aerial photographic survey carried out from Bruff in 1986, which identified it as a circular cropmark, the kind of faint discolouration in vegetation that overhead photography can reveal even when nothing is visible at ground level. The monument was subsequently confirmed as a circular earthwork on OSi aerial orthoimagery taken sometime between 2005 and 2012. By June 2018, however, a Google Earth image of the same ground showed nothing. The record was compiled by Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly and uploaded in September 2020.

Two further ring barrows lie within easy reach of this one, recorded separately as LI023-325 and LI023-326, at roughly 10 metres to the northeast and 25 metres to the east-northeast. That clustering is not unusual; prehistoric communities often grouped their burial monuments together, and finding one in a field is frequently a sign that others are nearby. Anyone visiting the area should expect working farmland and the kind of soft, seasonally waterlogged ground that the record explicitly flags. The monument is most likely to show itself in dry summers, when cropmarks emerge from parched grass, and least likely to be legible in the wet conditions that seem to define this particular corner of Mountminnett for much of the year.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Barrow (Ring Barrow), Mountminnett, Co. Limerick. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement