Barrow - bowl-barrow, Multyfarnham, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Barrows
Along the north-east bank of the River Gaine, near Multyfarnham in County Westmeath, a steep-sided earthen mound sits on the brow of a low ridge, so smothered in thorn trees and brambles that it takes some effort to read as a monument at all.
Yet beneath that tangled growth is a bowl-barrow, one of the older categories of prehistoric burial monument found across Ireland and Britain. Bowl-barrows are roughly circular mounds, typically raised over one or more burials, and often ringed by a shallow encircling ditch. This one fits the type closely enough, though nature and time have worked hard to obscure it.
When surveyed in 2012, the mound measured roughly 15.5 metres across and stood around 2.1 metres tall on its north-east side, where measurement was still possible. It is flat-topped rather than fully domed, and its sides are notably steep for an earthwork of this kind. A shallow ditch runs around it, best preserved on the south-south-west side, where it dips about 16 centimetres below the present ground surface. Damage is visible at the edges: part of the north-west side has been cut away, which at least revealed something useful, showing the mound to be built of earth mixed with some stone. A section of the south-west side appears similarly disturbed, though heavy vegetation makes it difficult to assess the extent of the loss. The monument sits in a low-lying position, which limits long views from its summit; what visibility there is opens up to the south-west and west. Records indicate that at least two other burial mounds and a further unclassified mound lie in nearby fields, though attempts to locate them during the 2012 survey were unsuccessful, leaving open the question of whether this barrow once sat within a larger funerary landscape along the Gaine valley.