Barrow (Ring Barrow), Ballynagally, Co. Limerick

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Barrow (Ring Barrow), Ballynagally, Co. Limerick

A small circular earthwork sitting in reclaimed pasture in County Limerick managed to go unrecorded on Ordnance Survey Ireland's historic maps entirely, despite being old enough to have been a burial monument from prehistory.

It took an aerial camera, not a surveyor on the ground, to bring it properly into view.

A ring-barrow is a burial mound of the type commonly associated with the Bronze Age in Ireland, typically consisting of a raised central area enclosed by a circular ditch, known as a fosse. The Ballynagally example fits that description: it measures roughly 11.5 metres north to south and 10.5 metres east to west, with a central circular area surrounded by just such a fosse. It was first formally identified during the Bruff aerial photographic survey in 1986, recorded as Bruff 30, reference AP 4/3668. What makes its situation particularly notable is that it does not stand alone. Within 110 metres to the north and north-east lie five further ring-barrows and a ditch-barrow, a related monument type defined by its enclosing ditch rather than a raised mound, suggesting this corner of the Ballynagally townland was once a significant funerary landscape. The Glenatrahaun Stream runs approximately 70 metres to the south-east, forming the boundary with the neighbouring townland of Coologe, and the wider land has since been converted to agricultural use, which may partly explain why the earthwork left so faint a trace on the ground-level record. The monument was compiled by Edmond O'Donovan and uploaded to the national record in September 2020.

Because the site sits on private reclaimed pasture, access would require landowner permission. The monument itself is not signposted and there is no formal visitor infrastructure. For those with an interest in the archaeology rather than a walk-in visit, the enclosure is clearly legible on Google Earth imagery from November 2018, and the cluster of related monuments in the immediate area can be cross-referenced using the Sites and Monuments Record references LI024-322, LI024-225, and LI024-070. Aerial or satellite viewing remains, for now, the most practical way to appreciate the full extent of what survives here.

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Pete F
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