Barrow, Garrydoolis, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Barrows
A field in the west of Garrydoolis townland, Co. Limerick, holds what appears to be a cluster of ancient burial monuments that never once appeared on any historical Ordnance Survey Ireland map.
They have simply been there, beneath the improved pasture, unrecorded in cartographic terms, until aerial photography made them legible from above.
A ring-barrow is a roughly circular earthen mound, typically of prehistoric origin, often associated with burial, and sometimes surrounded by a ditch or bank. The example recorded here, along with up to seven others in the same large field (which measures approximately 125 metres north to south and 175 metres east to west), was first identified during the Bruff aerial photographic survey of 1986, catalogued as Bruff 122.01. The site sits in improved agricultural pasture just north of a farm track, and the earthworks themselves have been flattened to the point where they no longer register on the ground as obvious mounds. What gives them away is the differential growth of grass and crops over buried features, producing the circular cropmarks visible on Ordnance Survey orthophotography taken between 2005 and 2012, and confirmed again on a Google Earth image dated 18 November 2018. The record was compiled by Martin Fitzpatrick and uploaded to the national monuments database in April 2021.
Because these features survive only as cropmarks rather than upstanding earthworks, a visit on foot offers little in the way of visible remains. The site is working farmland, so access would require the landowner's permission. The cropmarks are most likely to be visible in dry summer conditions, when moisture stress reveals buried ditches and banks through variations in vegetation colour and height. Anyone with access to the Google Earth archive or the OSi orthophoto layers can examine the circular forms without leaving their desk, which is, in its own way, a reasonable reflection of how the site was discovered in the first place.