Barrow - mound barrow, Killulagh, Co. Westmeath

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Barrow – mound barrow, Killulagh, Co. Westmeath

A dome-shaped burial mound sitting on top of a natural hillock in County Westmeath sounds straightforward enough until you look more closely at what is holding it together.

A mature ash tree on the mound's south-south-east side has sent its roots so deeply into the structure that the southern half is thoroughly penetrated by them. Paradoxically, those roots now help shore the mound up; the portion of the mound above the root line remains largely intact, while below it the earth has eroded significantly. The west side was so overgrown during the 2015 survey that it could not be properly inspected at all.

The mound itself is roughly circular, measuring approximately 13.8 metres across from north-west to south-east and 12.4 metres from north-east to south-west, though its east-south-east edge is poorly defined, possibly because of slippage over time. It rises between 1.5 and 1.75 metres above the surrounding pasture. A mound-barrow is essentially a burial cairn or earthen mound raised over a grave or graves, distinguished from a bowl-barrow by the absence of a surrounding ditch or fosse. The classification here was a matter of some debate: an earlier survey from 1981 had categorised it as a bowl-barrow, but a 1973 account had already noted explicitly that no encircling fosse was present, and David McGuinness, who surveyed the monument in 2015, found no trace of one either, settling on mound-barrow as the more accurate designation. Past digging has slightly damaged the perimeter on the south-east and south-west sides. The mound occupies a deliberately prominent position, with the ground falling away sharply to the north-east, giving clear visibility northward across the landscape. Within a short radius sit two further monuments of entirely different periods: a possible Anglo-Norman ringwork, the remains of a defensive enclosure type introduced after the twelfth-century invasion, lies about 150 metres to the south-south-east, while the ruined medieval parish church of Killulagh and its burial ground stand roughly 250 to 285 metres to the north-north-east.

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