Barrow (Ring Barrow), Cross (Coonagh By.), Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Barrows
Some ancient monuments announce themselves with drama.
This one barely announces itself at all. Sitting on a north-facing slope of rough, wet pasture in County Limerick, this ring barrow is so low-lying that it does not appear on Ordnance Survey Ireland's historic maps, and successive aerial and satellite surveys, taken between 2005 and 2018, failed to pick it up entirely. A monument that predates written Irish history, surviving in a field, invisible from the air: there is something quietly remarkable about that.
A ring barrow is a prehistoric burial mound, typically a circular earthen mound encircled by a ditch and sometimes an outer bank, thought to date broadly to the Bronze Age. When the Archaeological Survey of Ireland examined this example in 2008, surveyors Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly found a monument of notably modest dimensions: a low, circular earthwork measuring just 2.2 metres northeast to southwest and 1.5 metres northwest to southeast, defined by a scarp, the eroded edge of raised ground, between 0.15 and 0.35 metres high, and a surrounding fosse, or ditch, ranging from 3.65 to 5.1 metres wide and up to 0.45 metres deep. These features are traceable only along part of the monument's circumference, from the northwest around through north and east to the southeast. A land drain running roughly north-northeast to south-southwest extends outward from the fosse, a later agricultural intrusion that has further complicated the site's legibility. The barrow is one of two satellite ring barrows situated just five metres to the north of a substantially larger barrow nearby, suggesting that this small cluster once formed part of a more deliberate funerary landscape. The Reask River runs 120 metres to the north, also serving as the townland boundary between Cross in the barony of Coonagh and the neighbouring townland of Brackyle.
For anyone inclined to seek it out, the site sits in working farmland and the ground conditions are characteristically wet, so the approach is best attempted in drier months when the pasture is less waterlogged. The monument's profile is so subdued that even standing beside it requires some attentiveness: look for the faint curve of the scarp and the slight depression of the fosse rather than any obvious mound. The larger barrow to the south provides a useful point of orientation. Given that the site does not register on aerial imagery, locating it on foot, with a grid reference and a willingness to read the ground carefully, is genuinely part of the experience.