Barrow (Ditch barrow), Mooresfort, Co. Tipperary

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Barrow (Ditch barrow), Mooresfort, Co. Tipperary

In a field of improved pasture in Mooresfort, Co. Tipperary, a circular patch of ground barely distinguishable from the surrounding grass marks a prehistoric burial monument that most people would walk straight past.

The feature is a ditch barrow, a type of funerary monument in which a low enclosing fosse, essentially a shallow ditch dug in a ring, defines a circular interior that would originally have covered a burial. This particular example is modest even by the understated standards of the type: roughly 4.5 metres north to south and 4.7 metres east to west, with a fosse just 2.2 metres wide and a mere 10 centimetres deep at most points. The ground inside sits nearly flat, tilting very slightly downslope toward the south-south-east, following the gentle gradient of the hillside on which it sits.

What makes the site quietly interesting is that it does not stand alone. The fosse is shared with a second ditch barrow immediately to the north-north-east, suggesting the two monuments were either planned together or accumulated in close proximity over time, their boundaries meeting and merging into a single earthwork serving both. The barrow sits due south of a large pond and south-west of a rectangular shelter belt of trees, landmarks that would have looked entirely different, or not existed at all, when the monument was first raised. It was identified during a field survey carried out by Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly on 28 November 2008, and the fact that it required a dedicated survey to be formally recorded says something about how thoroughly this category of monument can disappear into an agricultural landscape.

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Pete F
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