Barrow, Garryduff, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Barrows

Barrow, Garryduff, Co. Kilkenny

In a tillage field in Garryduff, Co. Kilkenny, there is a monument that no one walking the land would easily notice.

Centuries of ploughing have levelled whatever once rose above the surface, yet from the air, aerial photographs taken in August 1995 and 1996 reveal something unmistakable: the cropmark of a circular enclosure, its geometry preserved in the way crops grow differently over disturbed or compacted subsoil. The enclosure measures roughly 16 metres across internally and about 40 metres overall, defined by two widely spaced ditches, or fosses, set some 9 to 12 metres apart, with the outer fosse being both wider and deeper than the inner.

What makes this site particularly compelling is not the enclosure alone but its company. Within a radius of roughly 60 metres, aerial photography has identified at least five further ring-ditches, the buried outlines of circular monuments clustered closely together to the north, northwest, northeast, and west. Ring-ditches of this kind are typically the eroded or ploughed-down remains of prehistoric burial mounds, and the concentration of several in such proximity strongly points toward a funerary or ceremonial landscape, a place that held some significance across generations. The Garryduff enclosure, with its double-fosse arrangement and scale, is considered a probable plough-levelled barrow, a type of prehistoric burial or commemorative mound that once stood above ground and has since been gradually worn flat by agricultural activity over many centuries.

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Pete F
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