Barrow (Ring Barrow), Bunavie, Co. Limerick

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Barrow (Ring Barrow), Bunavie, Co. Limerick

A circular earthwork roughly ten metres across sits on a west-facing slope at Bunavie in County Limerick, quietly occupying a field that has long since been converted to pasture.

What makes this particular feature quietly curious is that it went entirely unrecorded on Ordnance Survey historic mapping, meaning it passed through the great age of Irish cartographic documentation without leaving any trace on paper. It was only from the air that the site gave itself away.

The monument belongs to a class known as a ring barrow, a prehistoric burial form typically consisting of a low central mound enclosed by a circular ditch and outer bank. These earthworks are funerary in origin, generally dating to the Bronze Age, though their precise age at any given site depends on excavation evidence that does not always exist. The Bunavie example came to formal attention through the Bruff aerial photographic survey of 1986, recorded under reference AP 4/3721, when the circular-shaped conjoined earthwork was identified from above. It is described as conjoined to another ring barrow to its west-northwest, the two monuments sharing or abutting their boundaries in a way that suggests deliberate proximity rather than coincidence. Subsequent orthophotos from Digital Globe, taken between 2011 and 2013, and Google Earth imagery from November 2018 confirmed the site remains visible as a distinct earthwork at ground level. The record was compiled by Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly, uploaded to the national monuments database in July 2020.

Because the site sits within reclaimed agricultural pasture, access will depend on landowner permission, and there is no formal public approach. The earthwork is subtle rather than dramatic; at ten metres in diameter, it reads more clearly from aerial imagery than from the field boundary. Visiting in winter or early spring, when vegetation is low, gives the best chance of reading the slight rise and curve of the bank on the ground. The conjoined nature of the two barrows is the detail most worth looking for, though appreciating it fully may require comparing the site against the aerial images held in the national record.

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