Barrow, Ballymacthomas, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Barrows
In a slightly marshy field beside a tributary of the River Lee in County Kerry, something old and circular is doing its best to disappear.
What survives here is a possible barrow, a type of prehistoric burial mound, that has been so worn down by centuries of agricultural use that it now registers more as a subtle arrangement of low earthworks than anything a casual walker would pause to investigate. The land around it slopes gently westward, and despite efforts to drain and reclaim the field for pasture, the ground retains enough moisture to hint at why this spot may have resisted full domestication.
The structure itself is quietly intricate. A sub-circular bank, averaging around 4.5 metres in width and surviving to just half a metre above the surrounding ground at its highest northern point, rings a shallow ditch roughly 1.5 metres wide. Inside that ditch sits a circular central platform six metres in diameter. The whole arrangement measures approximately 18 metres east to west and 16 metres north to south. More unusual still is the presence of a second, outer bank set about 10 metres beyond the first, ranging from 10 metres wide on the south side to 12 metres at its northern extent, and standing slightly higher internally than externally. This double-banked arrangement sets the site apart from a simple mound burial and places it within a more complex funerary or ceremonial landscape. The barrow does not exist in isolation either; nearby features recorded in the same field include earthen enclosures, small mounds, and a linear earthwork, all part of a broader archaeological complex. Michael Connolly documented the site during a survey of the Lee Valley area carried out in 1996 and 1997, by which point reclamation work had already taken a considerable toll on what remained.