Barrow - bowl-barrow, Ballyremon Commons, Co. Wicklow

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Barrow – bowl-barrow, Ballyremon Commons, Co. Wicklow

On a gently east-facing slope at Ballyremon Commons in County Wicklow, a low earthen mound sits quietly in the landscape, its outline just distinct enough to catch the eye of anyone who knows what to look for.

It is a bowl-barrow, a type of prehistoric funerary monument consisting of a rounded mound enclosed by a surrounding ditch, known as a fosse, and an outer earthen bank. These were typically built during the Bronze Age as burial monuments, though the people interred within them and the rituals once performed there are largely beyond recovery without excavation.

The mound itself measures roughly 12.5 metres north to south and 11 metres east to west, rising to about 1.5 metres in height. Around it, the fosse varies in width, running to about 5 metres on the western side and narrowing to around 2.5 metres to the east, with a depth of approximately 1 metre. Beyond that lies the external bank, which reaches nearly a metre in height at its most pronounced point on the eastern side. Taken together, the full spread of the monument, mound, fosse, and bank combined, extends to around 24 metres by 25.5 metres. The site has not survived entirely intact; a laneway and a field boundary have cut into it on the north-north-east side, leaving the monument somewhat truncated. Notably, the 1838 Ordnance Survey six-inch map records the feature as a small enclosure, suggesting it was visible and mappable even then, though its true prehistoric character would not necessarily have been understood at the time.

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Pete F
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