Barrow, Ballintruer More, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Barrows
There is an ancient monument in the fields of Ballintruer More, County Wicklow, that you cannot see by standing on the ground above it.
A circular enclosure roughly eighteen metres across, defined by a fosse (a defensive or boundary ditch cut into the earth), it exists in the visible record only from the air, where the differential growth of crops above disturbed soil betrays the outline of something older beneath. That outline, a cropmark captured in aerial photography, is what identifies this as a probable barrow site, one of the prehistoric burial or ritual mounds found across Ireland and the wider Atlantic world, typically dating to the Bronze Age or earlier.
The site sits on a gentle north-west-facing slope in County Wicklow, positioned some thirty metres north-east of a related monument nearby. Its presence was established through aerial reconnaissance rather than excavation, meaning that while the circular plan is clear enough, the full nature of what lies beneath remains unconfirmed. The designation as a possible barrow is exactly that, a reasonable interpretation of the evidence available, not a settled conclusion. Wicklow has a considerable concentration of prehistoric activity, and sites of this kind are not unusual in the broader landscape, though individually they are often poorly understood precisely because so little physical trace survives at the surface.