Barrow (Ditch barrow), Raheen (Coshlea By.), Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Barrows
A small circular ditch cut into a pasture field in County Limerick sounds like an unremarkable thing, until you consider that it was already ancient when it went unrecorded on the Ordnance Survey's six-inch maps, and that it survived, just barely, into the modern era only because a gas pipeline happened to cross it.
This ditch-barrow in Raheen, in the barony of Coshlea, is not a monument you can visit in any conventional sense. It is, more precisely, a site that was here, quietly waiting beneath the soil, until infrastructure work brought it briefly to light.
A ditch-barrow is a type of funerary monument, typically a low circular mound or flat interior enclosed by a surrounding ditch, associated broadly with prehistoric burial practice. This example came to archaeological attention during the Bórd Gáis Éireann Curraleigh to Limerick gas pipeline project, documented by Gowen in 1988. It was excavated by Claire Walsh, whose findings were published in 1987. The ring-barrow ditch measured between 4.45 and 4.80 metres in external diameter, with an internal diameter of 3.20 to 3.64 metres, making it a compact feature. No finds were recovered from the fill, and no intact deposits survived within the enclosed interior. The site had already been cut by a field bank and drain across its north-western half before grading for the pipeline further truncated the remaining features. Close by, within roughly 100 metres, lay a separate cremation pit and an earthwork, suggesting this small corner of Limerick was once a more substantial focus of prehistoric activity. A hearth, pits, and a possible kiln were also identified in the same pipeline corridor.
There is nothing to see above ground today. The excavation took place after mechanical grading had already disturbed the upper layers, and the site exists now primarily as a record in the archaeological archive, catalogued under the Sites and Monuments Record. For anyone tracing the pipeline route through this part of Limerick, or researching the prehistoric landscape of Coshlea, Walsh's published summary and the associated SMR entries offer the most complete picture of what was once here.