Barrow, Leagane, Co. Limerick

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Barrows

Barrow, Leagane, Co. Limerick

Some ancient monuments announce themselves clearly; this one in Leagane, County Limerick, has been quietly disappearing.

What may once have been a bowl-barrow, a type of low, rounded burial mound typically dating to the Bronze Age, survives today, if it survives at all, as little more than a shallow circular depression in a field. Even that faint impression, roughly seven metres across, was only captured on satellite imagery taken between 2011 and 2013. By September 2019, later aerial photographs showed no surface remains whatsoever.

The site was identified as a possible bowl-barrow by Matt Kelleher during a field visit on 12 April 1997. It sits in pasture approximately 160 metres east of a roadway that marks the townland boundary with Tobernea West, and it does not appear on any of the Ordnance Survey Ireland historic maps, which suggests it was either already too faint to record by the time systematic mapping began, or was simply overlooked. A second possible barrow, catalogued separately, lies about 65 metres to the south-west, hinting that this corner of Leagane may once have held more significance in the prehistoric landscape than the current unremarkable pasture implies. The record was compiled by Martin Fitzpatrick and uploaded in August 2021.

For anyone curious enough to look, the site lies in working farmland and there is no public access infrastructure to speak of. The roadway along the townland boundary with Tobernea West provides the nearest reference point, but beyond that, the ground itself is unlikely to offer much reward. The depression that once hinted at the barrow's existence may no longer be legible at ground level, and without visible earthworks, what the visitor is really confronting is an absence, a place where something ancient probably stood, and where even the faint trace of it seems to be fading back into the soil.

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Pete F
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