Barrow (Ring Barrow), Corbally, Co. Dublin
Co. Dublin |
Barrows
On the southern slopes of Tallaght Hill in County Dublin, a low earthwork survives in two halves, split neatly down the middle by a townland boundary running north to south.
That bureaucratic line in the landscape is, in its own way, a fitting accident: the monument it bisects was already ancient when the boundaries of Irish parishes and townlands were being formalised, and it has been quietly deteriorating ever since. What remains is a ring-barrow, a type of prehistoric funerary monument in which a circular mound or flat area is enclosed by a bank and a fosse, the fosse being a shallow internal ditch. These structures are associated broadly with the Bronze Age, though their precise dates and uses vary, and they are often found in clusters near other burial monuments.
This one sits immediately south of a cist burial, a form of interment in which a stone-lined box or chamber holds human remains, typically placed beneath a small mound. The proximity of the two monuments to one another is characteristic of prehistoric landscapes, where the dead were often gathered in loose groupings across prominent hilltops. The ring-barrow was recorded by Healy in 1974, and the site was later compiled by Geraldine Stout. By that point the western section of the monument had already been heavily compromised, covered in furze and debris from nearby quarrying activity. The eastern section retained its essential shape: an external bank measuring roughly 1.5 metres wide and 0.3 metres high, with an inner fosse approximately 1 metre wide and 0.25 metres deep, giving the whole an external diameter of around 14 metres north to south.
The monument is unenclosed and lies on open hillside, but the surrounding terrain and vegetation make it easy to overlook without some foreknowledge of what to look for. The eastern arc of the bank and fosse offers the clearest reading of the original form; the western half is largely obscured by scrubby growth and loose stone, and is more difficult to interpret on the ground. The hilltop setting means the site can be exposed in poor weather, and the earthworks themselves are low enough that they read better in raking winter light, when shadows pick out slight changes in ground level that summer grass or bracken would otherwise flatten entirely. There is no formal access or signage, so an OS map and some patience are the practical requirements.