Barrow - mound barrow, Rabradagh, Co. Roscommon

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Barrow – mound barrow, Rabradagh, Co. Roscommon

On a ridge in Rabradagh, County Roscommon, a small earthen mound sits at the summit towards the north-western end of a north-west to south-east running high ground, positioned at the north-western edge of a larger barrow's central platform.

It measures roughly four metres by four-and-a-half metres, and rises only thirty centimetres above the surrounding ground. Easy to walk past, easy to mistake for a natural irregularity in the terrain, it is in fact a mound barrow, a type of prehistoric funerary monument in which the dead, or offerings associated with them, were covered over with earth to create a deliberate raised form in the landscape.

The mound sits in relation to a companion monument on the same platform, and its placement at the ridge summit suggests it was sited with some intention, occupying elevated ground in a way that was common among those who built such structures during the Bronze Age. The monument carries a preservation order under the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014, which speaks to its recognised archaeological significance despite its modest proportions. Small barrows of this kind are not unusual across Ireland, but they are frequently overlooked precisely because time and agriculture have reduced them to subtle undulations, their original profiles long softened by centuries of weather and grazing.

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Pete F
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