Barrow (Ring Barrow), Ballynamona, Co. Limerick

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Barrow (Ring Barrow), Ballynamona, Co. Limerick

A public road cuts straight through the south-eastern edge of this prehistoric burial mound in County Limerick, and most people who drive past it probably have no idea what lies just beyond the verge.

The ring barrow at Ballynamona sits in reclaimed pasture near the townland boundary with Castlefarm, and from ground level it reads as little more than a gentle rise in a grass field. From the air, the picture is quite different: aerial photographs held by the Archaeological Survey of Ireland reveal a roughly circular earthwork around 54 metres across, with an inner raised platform of about 28 metres in diameter, defined by a scarp, an enclosing fosse (a shallow ditch), and an outer bank with its own external fosse. A curvilinear land drain loops around the northern arc, following the monument's edge as though the field has quietly accommodated it for centuries.

The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp noted the site in 1922, grouping it with a nearby stone circle as part of what he called the Loch Gur group, referring to the broader constellation of prehistoric monuments clustered around Lough Gur a few kilometres to the north-east. Westropp described both monuments as being cut by a laneway in Ballinamona, and placed them geographically between Knockainey and the landmark known as Cromwell Hill. The 1897 edition of the Ordnance Survey 25-inch map recorded the earthwork as a sub-oval platform measuring roughly 52 metres east to west and 47 metres north to south, with a fosse to the west and a curvilinear drainage feature running from the north-east around to the south-east. Ring barrows are a form of funerary monument generally associated with the Bronze Age, consisting of a low central mound enclosed by one or more ditches and banks, and this one appears to have survived in reasonably good condition despite the encroachment of the road and agricultural drainage works over many generations.

The monument is on private farmland, so access is not guaranteed, and there is nothing at the roadside to announce its presence. The most instructive view comes from above: orthoimages captured between 2005 and 2013 by Ordnance Survey Ireland and Digital Globe show the circular form clearly. Visitors to the wider Lough Gur landscape, where there is an established heritage centre and well-marked sites open to the public, may find it worth pausing on the road through Ballynamona to look across the field and try to read the low earthwork for what it is. The road itself, in a quiet way, is part of the story, having bisected the monument at its south-eastern edge long before anyone thought to record or protect it.

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