Barrow (Ring Barrow), Moanroe (Coonagh By.), Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Barrows
In a field of reclaimed pasture in County Limerick, there is a prehistoric burial monument that is effectively invisible to anyone standing in it.
The ring-barrow at Moanroe, in the Coonagh barony, reveals itself not to walkers or casual visitors but to cameras looking straight down from above. What the naked eye misses, aerial photography catches: a cropmark outlining the circular form of a double-ditched ring-barrow, its buried ditches betrayed by the way grass and crops grow fractionally differently over disturbed soil.
A ring-barrow is a low, rounded burial mound, typically of Bronze Age origin, enclosed by one or more circular ditches. The double-ditched variety, as seen here, suggests a monument of some elaboration, with two concentric rings dug around a central mound. The Moanroe example carries the Sites and Monuments Record reference LI025-032---- and sits on ground that has been substantially altered over time, the land having been drained and reclaimed for agriculture. A companion monument, a second ring-barrow, lies roughly twenty metres to the west. The cropmark was first captured clearly on an Ordnance Survey Ireland orthophoto taken in late 2005, and confirmed again in a Google Earth image dated 18 November 2018. The record was compiled by Caimin O'Brien, drawing on details and photography provided by Edmond O'Donovan.
There is nothing here to mark the spot, no signage, no fencing, no raised ground to catch the eye. The site sits on working farmland with moderate views in most directions, the flat reclaimed terrain offering little in the way of dramatic landscape context. For anyone with an interest in the site, the most instructive approach is through the aerial imagery itself, which remains publicly accessible via Google Earth. Visiting the area is possible, though the site is on private agricultural land and access would require landowner permission. The lesson of Moanroe is largely one of method: that some of Ireland's oldest monuments have not so much disappeared as become legible only from a different altitude.