Barrow - mound barrow, Glenbane, Co. Tipperary

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Barrow – mound barrow, Glenbane, Co. Tipperary

A low earthen mound sitting on the flat crown of a hill in Glenbane is easy to overlook, yet it is far older than almost anything else in the surrounding landscape.

This is a mound barrow, a type of prehistoric funerary monument in which earth was heaped up, typically over a burial or series of burials, to create a lasting marker visible across the surrounding countryside. This particular example is circular in plan, flat-topped, and modest in scale: roughly 13.2 metres across at the base, 3.2 metres across at the top, and rising to just under two metres in height. There is no fosse, the encircling ditch that often accompanies such mounds, nor any visible quarry hollow from which material might have been extracted to build it.

The mound occupies a locally prominent position, with ground falling away gently to the west and north, which suggests its placement was deliberate. Whoever raised it chose a spot from which it would be seen, and from which, presumably, the wider land could be surveyed. The southern and south-eastern edges have suffered erosion over time, leaving an irregular hollow that runs from the summit down to the base. A farm track, aligned roughly east to west, now runs along the southern side of the mound, pressing right up against its base. Forty metres to the south-east sits a ringfort, a circular enclosed settlement of the early medieval period, and a water reservoir occupies the ground a little closer still. The mound itself is largely free of vegetation, save for a single mature thorn bush on its southern side.

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Pete F
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