Barrow (Ring Barrow), Feloree, Co. Limerick

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Barrow (Ring Barrow), Feloree, Co. Limerick

A ring barrow sits in a pasture field in Feloree, County Limerick, and the Ordnance Survey maps show no sign of it at all.

For a burial monument that measures roughly 34 metres across its outer edge, that is a quiet kind of invisibility, the sort that keeps a prehistoric site undisturbed for generations simply because no one thought to draw it on paper.

The monument was only formally identified through an aerial photographic survey carried out in 1986 as part of the Bruff survey programme, when a circular cropmark roughly 30 metres in diameter, defined by a scarp, was picked out from the air. A ring barrow is a funerary earthwork, typically of Bronze Age date, consisting of a low central mound or flat platform enclosed by a circular ditch, known as a fosse, and an outer bank of upcast earth. At Feloree, the OSi orthoimage confirms that the upstanding remains are still legible on the ground, with an interior area of approximately 18 metres enclosed by exactly that combination of fosse and outer bank. Two ponds flank the monument, one immediately to the north-north-east and another to the south-south-east, giving the site an oddly symmetrical watery setting. A Google Earth image dated 25 May 2017 also shows a cropmark consistent with a levelled companion monument nearby, suggesting the area may once have held more than one such structure. The record was compiled by Martin Fitzpatrick and uploaded in July 2020.

The site lies approximately 180 metres south-east of a separate enclosure recorded in the same townland. Because it does not appear on standard OS mapping, locating it requires either consulting the national Sites and Monuments Record or working from the OSi orthoimagery. Access is across private farmland, so landowner permission would be needed before approaching on foot. The surrounding pasture and the flanking ponds are probably the most useful landmarks once you are in the vicinity, and in dry summer conditions the earthwork's circular outline, slightly raised and enclosed by its shallow ditch and bank, should still be readable from ground level.

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Pete F
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