Barrow (Ring Barrow), Ballincollig, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Barrows
A circular mound rising two metres above a surrounding ditch, set in the Kerry landscape and misidentified in official records for years as a simple enclosure, this ring-barrow at Ballincollig quietly corrects the assumption that prehistoric burial monuments are always easy to read from the ground.
The distinction matters: where an enclosure might be the remains of a farmstead or boundary feature, a ring-barrow is a funerary monument, a burial mound ringed by a ditch and an outer bank, its form placing it within a tradition of prehistoric mortuary practice found across Ireland and Britain.
The structure was assessed by Connolly in 2000, who noted that the central platform measures twelve metres in diameter and stands two metres above the base of the encircling ditch. That ditch averages three metres in width, and the outer bank, most visible to the north and south, survives to around one metre in height and up to four metres across. It is a reasonably well-preserved example of its type, though its long misclassification on the official Sites and Monuments Record for County Kerry suggests it received less attention than its form deserves. The outline of the monument remains visible in aerial imagery taken between 2011 and 2013, which is often how such earthworks reveal their true geometry, the slight shadows cast by low earthen banks reading more clearly from above than at ground level.