Barrow, Clooneen, Co. Clare

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Barrows

Barrow, Clooneen, Co. Clare

On the summit of Knockcarragh Hill in County Clare, a grass-covered mound sits in what is now ordinary reclaimed pastureland, quietly resisting any easy classification.

It is broad enough, measuring roughly 13 metres east to west and 11 metres north to south, and tall enough at its highest point to read unmistakably as something deliberate on the landscape. Its flat top slopes gently southward and is covered in overgrown field-clearance stones, giving it the slightly dishevelled look of a place that has been used, ignored, and half-forgotten across several different eras.

The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp, writing in 1913, called it a conspicuous little tumulus, a tumulus being a burial mound of prehistoric origin, typically earthen and rounded. He seems to have found it self-evident that the thing warranted attention. By 1996 it had been formally classified as an enclosure in the Record of Monuments and Places, a category that reflects some uncertainty about its original purpose. The mound itself is built of earth and large stones, and while its subcircular, flat-topped form is distinctive, one of its more telling details is the drystone field wall that runs across it from northwest to south-southeast. According to local information, that wall was built by the Land Commission during the 1920s, the Land Commission being the body responsible for redistributing agricultural land in Ireland following the breakup of large estates. The wall cuts straight through the mound with the practical indifference of an organisation focused on fields rather than archaeology. The northern edge of the mound has also been straightened and aligned northeast to southwest, suggesting further modification at some point. The site was recorded on the 1916 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, hachured in the manner used to indicate raised earthworks, which at least confirms it was recognisable and notable more than a century ago, before the Land Commission wall arrived to complicate matters.

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Pete F
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