Barrow (Ring Barrow), Annagh, Co. Kerry

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Barrows

Barrow (Ring Barrow), Annagh, Co. Kerry

Three prehistoric burial mounds sit together in a waterlogged field near the Kerry coast, roughly 200 metres from the sea, on the west bank of a small river given to flooding.

That any of them survive at all is quietly remarkable. The one under consideration here is a ring barrow, a type of funerary monument typically consisting of a circular earthen bank and internal ditch enclosing a raised central platform, all constructed during prehistoric times to mark and protect a place of burial. This particular example measures 23 metres across in both directions, and its proportions are still legible despite the wet ground and the rough grazing cattle that now work the field around it.

The details that survive tell a story of incremental damage rather than dramatic destruction. At some point after the Ordnance Survey second edition map was made, a field fence was driven east to west straight through the middle of the enclosure. That fence has since been removed, but its lowest course of stones still remains embedded in the barrow. On the south-east side, a section roughly 2.5 metres square has been cut away by someone quarrying the site for rock and building material. What remains is a bank averaging 3 metres in width, reaching up to 0.80 metres in height on the south side, enclosing an inner ditch some 2.5 metres wide. Inside that ditch, a circular central platform 10 metres in diameter rises 0.35 metres above the ditch floor. Several other low banks of earth and stone occur nearby, though their relationship to the barrow complex has not been established. The site was recorded during a survey of the Lee Valley area carried out in 1996 and 1997, and two further barrows occupy the same field.

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