Barrow, Pollacorragune, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Barrows

Barrow, Pollacorragune, Co. Galway

On the eastern slope of a ridge at Pollacorragune in County Galway, a prehistoric burial monument now shares its ground with a sheep-feeding unit.

That juxtaposition, ancient funerary earthwork and working farm infrastructure occupying the same modest patch of hillside, says a great deal about how the Irish landscape tends to accumulate time rather than sort it into tidy categories.

The monument is a circular barrow, a form of prehistoric burial mound typically comprising a raised central area enclosed by a surrounding bank or ditch, sometimes covering the remains of the dead and the objects placed with them. This particular example measures roughly 12.6 metres in external diameter, with a central circular area of around 6 metres across. It is, by any assessment, poorly preserved. The earthen bank that encircles the central area is low but described as substantial, suggesting its original extent was considerable even if subsequent centuries have reduced it. A modern bank overlies the southern sector, a gap at the north-east appears to be a later intervention, and a shed sits immediately to the east of the monument. The sheep-feeding unit within the central area has disturbed what would have been the most archaeologically sensitive part of the site.

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