Barrow (Ring Barrow), Cloghaderreen, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Barrows
A prehistoric burial ground sits in the rolling pasture of Cloghaderreen in County Limerick, and most people who have ever passed near it had no idea it was there.
The site does not appear on any historic Ordnance Survey Ireland maps, meaning it escaped the attention of generations of cartographers who methodically recorded earthworks across the Irish countryside. It took a camera mounted on an aircraft, rather than boots on the ground, to confirm what lay in this quiet corner of east Limerick.
The site is one of twelve ring-barrows that together form a cemetery, a grouping that makes it archaeologically significant even if none of its components are individually large. A ring-barrow, in simple terms, is a burial mound of the prehistoric period encircled by a ditch and sometimes an outer bank, typically associated with Bronze Age funerary practice. This particular example was identified during the Bruff aerial photographic survey in 1986, catalogued as Bruff 165.2, and recorded as a circular ring-barrow with an external diameter of approximately seven metres. It sits on undulating pasture roughly 65 metres northeast of the townland boundary with Ballincassa, with a second ring-barrow recorded just five metres to its southwest. The cluster as a whole spans several reference numbers in the national Sites and Monuments Record, suggesting sustained prehistoric use of this patch of ground. Subsequent orthoimagery taken between 2005 and 2013, from both Ordnance Survey Ireland and Digital Globe, confirmed the cropmark evidence, and the feature remained clearly legible on Google Earth imagery captured as recently as November 2018. The record was compiled by Edmond O'Donovan and uploaded in September 2020.
Because the site exists within working farmland and is not marked on standard maps, a visitor would need to approach with some care. The ring-barrow is most clearly visible from the air or via satellite imagery, where the circular outline shows as a cropmark against the surrounding grass. At ground level, the surface expression is likely to be subtle, a low rise or faint depression depending on the season and condition of the pasture. Dry summers tend to bring out cropmarks most vividly, as differential moisture retention in the soil above buried features affects grass colour and growth. Given that the site sits on private agricultural land, any visit would require prior contact with the landowner, and the surrounding terrain, undulating and soft in wetter months, is best approached in dry conditions.