Barrow (Ditch barrow), Ballynamona, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Barrows
There is a prehistoric burial ground in the wet pasture of Ballynamona, County Limerick, that has essentially vanished from sight.
Nine barrows, the low earthen or ditched mounds used for burial during the Bronze Age and earlier periods, once formed a compact cemetery here, arranged across a strip of land roughly 240 metres north to south and just 50 metres wide. Today, satellite imagery taken between 2011 and 2013 shows no surface remains at all. The mounds have been swallowed by the landscape, leaving what was once a significant ceremonial site invisible to anyone simply passing through.
The site came to wider attention in 1934, when the archaeologist S. P. Ó Ríordáin excavated six of the nine barrows, publishing his findings in 1936. Ó Ríordáin was one of the leading figures in Irish field archaeology during the mid-twentieth century, and his work at Ballynamona was part of a broader effort to document and understand the prehistoric burial traditions of Munster. The remaining three barrows were left unexcavated; one of these, recorded as Site V in Field C, was deliberately set aside. The cemetery sits roughly 75 metres west of a small stream, and 270 metres west of the townland boundary with Lissard, placing it in a quiet, damp corner of agricultural land that has offered little to preserve what once stood above ground.
For anyone determined to visit, this is a site that rewards patience with records rather than the landscape itself. The coordinates are catalogued under the reference numbers LI049-072001 through LI049-072009 in the Sites and Monuments Record for County Limerick, which provides the most reliable means of locating the area. The ground is wet pasture, so suitable footwear matters considerably, and the lack of any visible earthworks means that without prior research, there is nothing obviously to distinguish this field from its neighbours. The value here is in what the documentation tells you is underfoot rather than what you can see, which gives the place a particular kind of quiet weight.