Barrow (Ring Barrow), Ballinglanna, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Barrows

Barrow (Ring Barrow), Ballinglanna, Co. Tipperary

On a south-facing pasture slope in County Tipperary, a small prehistoric burial mound survives in a form that is neither quite circular nor quite what most people picture when they imagine an ancient barrow.

This ring barrow, a type of monument in which a low central mound or flat area is enclosed by a circular or near-circular ditch and bank, takes an unusual D-shape here, measuring roughly 5.6 metres north to south and 3.25 metres east to west. That asymmetry is quiet but telling, a sign that these monuments were not always built to a strict template.

The fosse, the encircling ditch that defines the monument, is notably well preserved, measuring just over two metres in overall width with a narrow base of 0.4 metres and a depth of 0.2 metres. Traces of what may have been an outer bank are still visible in the south-east and north-west quadrants. The barrow sits immediately beside a ditch barrow to the east, and an enclosure lies roughly 23 metres to the south-west, suggesting this part of the landscape was used and marked repeatedly over time. The site was formally identified during field survey work carried out by Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly on 17 February 2009. One complicating feature cuts across the monument: a linear ridge aligned north to south, about a metre wide and only six centimetres high, which surveyors interpreted as probable upcast material from a shallow field drain inserted through the western sector at some later date, a reminder of how working farmland quietly disrupts what lies beneath it.

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Pete F
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