Barrow (Ring Barrow), Knockfennell, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Barrows
A cluster of prehistoric burial mounds so low and so thoroughly absorbed into the surrounding boggy pasture that aerial photography cannot pick them out at all.
That is the situation at Knockfennell in County Limerick, where three ring-barrows sit atop a rectangular earthen platform, the whole arrangement wedged into the angle of two land drains at the edge of what was once described as an extensive marsh. Ring-barrows are a class of funerary monument typically consisting of a low circular or oval mound surrounded by a shallow ditch, known as a fosse, and they are found across Ireland in varying states of preservation. Here, the preservation is, to put it charitably, subtle.
The site was first described in print by O'Kelly in 1944, who noted a very low rectangular platform enclosed by a very shallow fosse, measuring roughly 22.8 metres north to south and 13.7 metres east to west, with no recognisable entrance. At its southern end, two barrows lie side by side: one oval, measuring approximately 13.7 metres by 7 metres, and one circular, around 7.3 metres in diameter. A third circular barrow of the same diameter sits just to the south of the oval one, with their fosses conjoined. Ó Ríordáin and MacDermott returned to the site in 1949, confirming the arrangement and marking the platform on a location map, where it appears simply as the letter Y. The monument does not appear on Ordnance Survey Ireland historic maps, which may partly explain why it has attracted so little wider attention. Orthophotography from 2011 to 2013 and a Google Earth image from June 2018 show no visible trace of the monuments on the ground surface.
Finding this site requires some patience and a tolerance for wet ground. The monument lies in low-lying pasture about 160 metres south-west of the townland boundary with Ballingoola, and the surrounding land drains are a useful navigational reference. Because the mounds and their fosses are extremely shallow, visiting after a dry spell gives the best chance of reading anything in the topography; after rain, the ground becomes difficult and the subtle earthworks effectively disappear into the general dampness. There is no formal access, signage, or path, and the site sits in working farmland. The primary reward here is not spectacle but the particular experience of standing in a field knowing that a carefully arranged prehistoric funerary complex lies just beneath the unremarkable surface of the grass.