Barrow (Ring Barrow), Coolalough, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Barrows
A prehistoric burial monument sits in a rough, wet field in County Limerick, so thoroughly absorbed back into the landscape that aerial photography taken between 2005 and 2012 shows no surface trace of it whatsoever.
It was never marked on the Ordnance Survey Ireland historic maps, and without knowing where to look, there is nothing to see. That near-total invisibility is, in its own way, the point.
The site is a ring barrow, a type of circular funerary monument typically consisting of a low central platform surrounded by a shallow ditch and an enclosing earthen bank, all dating in general to the Bronze Age, though some examples extend into the Iron Age. This particular example was recorded by C. Tarbett in 1987, catalogued as Site 3 in a survey that placed it 15 metres south-west of the River Mahore, the watercourse that forms the boundary between the townlands of Coolalough and Oldtown. According to Tarbett's description, the barrow is circular with an external diameter of 12 metres. The interior platform, measuring 5 metres across, was reasonably well defined at the time of survey by a shallow ring ditch roughly 1.5 metres wide and only about 15 centimetres deep. Even then, only traces of the enclosing bank survived, visible at the north-west and south. It is one of a cluster of four barrows in the area, recorded together under the reference numbers LI040-037001 to LI040-037004.
Accessing this site means crossing wet, rough pasture, and the ground conditions near the River Mahore are unlikely to improve in wetter months. The monument itself offers no visual reward to the casual observer; whatever Tarbett could distinguish in 1987 has since been reduced further by agricultural activity and the general softening of earthworks over time. The value here is almost entirely one of context: knowing that beneath an ordinary-looking field, a structured burial monument once marked this particular patch of ground, close to a boundary river, among at least three others of its kind. Tarbett's 1987 survey drawing remains the most detailed record of what the barrow looked like before it effectively disappeared from view.