Barrow (Ring Barrow), Castleteheen, Co. Roscommon

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Barrow (Ring Barrow), Castleteheen, Co. Roscommon

On the broad summit of Mewlaghadooey Hill in County Roscommon, a low circular earthwork sits so quietly in the grass that it would be easy to walk across it without registering what it is.

This is a ring barrow, a type of prehistoric funerary monument consisting of a roughly circular area enclosed by a low earthen bank, the whole arrangement associated with burial practices from the Bronze Age or earlier. What makes this particular example worth pausing over is its position: it sits precisely on the line of the perimeter of a hillfort, meaning the two monuments either share a relationship in how the hilltop was used and understood, or the barrow was already ancient when the hillfort was laid out around it.

The barrow itself is grass-covered and measures approximately 9.3 metres across east to west and 8.7 metres north to south internally. The enclosing bank is modest, between five and six metres wide, rising only a few centimetres above the interior and perhaps thirty to forty centimetres above the exterior ground surface. There is no visible entrance gap in the bank, which is not unusual for ring barrows of this kind. A second ring barrow lies roughly twenty metres to the west-south-west, suggesting this summit was a place of some significance over a long period, with monuments accumulating rather than standing in isolation.

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Pete F
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