Barrow, Ballyfauskeen, Co. Limerick

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Barrow, Ballyfauskeen, Co. Limerick

Some ancient monuments disappear not through destruction but through simple submersion into the land itself.

In wet pasture in Ballyfauskeen, County Limerick, there is believed to be a ring-barrow, a circular earthen mound typically raised over a burial during the Bronze Age or Iron Age, that has left no visible trace on the ground for at least the past decade. It does not appear on any of the historic Ordnance Survey Ireland maps. To all outward appearances, the field is just a field.

The site came to light not through excavation or fieldwork but through aerial photography carried out on 3 November 1984, as part of the survey work preceding the Bórd Gáis Éireann Curraleigh West-Limerick gas pipeline. Aerial survey of this kind, flown at low altitude and recorded at a scale of 1:5000, can reveal crop marks and soil discolouration that ground-level inspection misses entirely, particularly where earthworks have been levelled or eroded over centuries. On photograph number 322 of series BGE 1/5000, reference 2610, what appeared to be the characteristic circular signature of a ring-barrow was identified. A second possible barrow lies approximately 40 metres to the north-east, suggesting this corner of Ballyfauskeen may once have held some significance as a burial or ceremonial landscape. The site record was compiled by Martin Fitzpatrick and uploaded to the national monument database in October 2021.

The location sits immediately east of a stream that marks the townland boundary between Ballyfauskeen and Curraghturk, in ground that is described as wet pasture, which goes some way to explaining why nothing survives at surface level. Waterlogged soil is hard on earthworks over long timescales. Subsequent review of Digital Globe orthoimagery from 2011 to 2013, and Google Earth imagery from the same general period, confirmed that no surface remains are now visible. Anyone hoping to see something definite on the ground will be disappointed; this is a site that exists primarily as a data point, a possible presence inferred from a photograph taken forty years ago on a November morning.

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