Barrow (Ring Barrow), Curragh, Co. Kildare

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Barrows

Barrow (Ring Barrow), Curragh, Co. Kildare

On the southern edge of the Curragh, that vast open plain in Co. Kildare long associated with horse racing and military encampment, a small prehistoric burial monument survives in a condition that is, frankly, marginal. What remains of this ring barrow sits on a low knoll, partly obscured by gorse, and is visible mainly because aerial photography reveals what ground-level inspection struggles to confirm.

A ring barrow is a burial mound of the Bronze Age type, typically consisting of a central raised area enclosed by a circular ditch, known as a fosse, and an outer earthen bank. Here, the circular area measures an estimated ten to twelve metres in diameter. The surrounding fosse is between 3.3 and 3.8 metres wide but only around 0.3 metres deep, and the outer bank, preserved on the north-west to north-east arc, rises to no more than 0.3 metres at its highest. On the eastern side, an entrance gap some four metres wide is accompanied by a corresponding causeway across the fosse, suggesting deliberate and intentional access to the interior. The southern and western portions of the monument have been largely quarried away, which accounts for much of the deterioration and explains why so little of the original circuit survives.

What is left amounts to a faint earthwork in a landscape that has seen considerable disturbance over the centuries. The Curragh's history of military and agricultural use has not been kind to the older features embedded within it, and this barrow is a fairly typical casualty of that long attrition. The entrance causeway on the east side is perhaps the most legible surviving detail, offering a trace of the original design beneath the gorse and the lost material to the south and west.

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Pete F
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