Barrow (Ring Barrow), Loughan, Co. Westmeath

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Barrows

Barrow (Ring Barrow), Loughan, Co. Westmeath

Sitting quietly in the pastureland of the Mount Dalton demesne in County Westmeath, a prehistoric ring barrow has survived the centuries in remarkably coherent form, its circular geometry still legible in the landscape.

A ring barrow is a burial mound of the Bronze Age type, distinguished from simpler cairns by the encircling ditch and outer bank that give the monument its name. What makes this particular example quietly curious is not just its preservation, but the odd accumulation of details at its edges: a slab of limestone worked into the bank, a gap where a section has been removed, and a hollowed pit nearby that may or may not have once served as a lime kiln, a small industrial structure used to burn limestone into quicklime for agricultural or building use.

The monument was surveyed in 2013 and described in detail by David McGuinness. The central mound measures roughly 11.5 metres north to south and 12.2 metres east to west, domed with a flattened top, and is surrounded by a ditch some 2.7 metres wide at its broadest. Beyond the ditch runs an outer bank up to 3.5 metres wide, rising as high as 0.8 metres above the ditch floor on its north-north-east side. The mound itself is slightly taller than the bank at several points, particularly on the north-east, where it reaches 1.1 metres above the ditch. On the south-east, erosion has left a visible step in the mound's profile. A single large, flat-topped limestone block has been incorporated into the bank on the west-south-west side, and a stretch of bank roughly 9 metres long on the north-north-west has been removed at some point. Just beyond the south-east edge of the monument lies a roughly circular pit, open to ground level on its eastern side, which McGuinness tentatively identified as a possible lime kiln. A small lake or fen sits 32 metres to the south-east, and approximately 400 metres to the south-west lies a second possible barrow, suggesting this corner of the demesne may have held greater prehistoric significance than its present pastoral quietness implies.

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