Barrow (Ring Barrow), Mountaincommon, Co. Mayo

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Barrow (Ring Barrow), Mountaincommon, Co. Mayo

On a hilltop in Mountaincommon, Co. Mayo, a low earthen mound sits in open pasture with no marker, no signpost, and no entry on any edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps.

That last detail is quietly significant. The OS six-inch series, produced across several editions from the nineteenth century onwards, is generally the baseline reference for locating prehistoric monuments in the Irish landscape. This one slipped through entirely.

What survives is a ring barrow, a burial monument type associated broadly with the Bronze Age, consisting of a central mound enclosed by a circular fosse and an outer bank. The fosse is the cut or ditch that separates the mound from its surrounding earthwork. Here, the central mound measures roughly six metres across and rises about 0.6 metres above the surrounding ground. It is slightly domed and, where erosion has bitten into its northern edge, the interior shows a construction of large angular stones packed with gravelly earth. The enclosing fosse runs between 1.5 and 2 metres wide, and the external bank beyond it spans about 2.4 metres, though both features are poorly defined in places. The overall diameter, measured from the outer edge of the bank on one side to the other, comes to approximately 12 metres. A small break in the bank on the south-south-west side, around half a metre wide, may represent an original entrance or simply later disturbance. Two field walls have encroached on the monument at different points, one clipping the outer bank to the north-north-east, another merging with it at the south-east. Three thorn bushes have taken root on the central mound itself, their roots presumably threading down through whatever remains beneath. The hill position is typical of the monument type; ring barrows are frequently placed on elevated ground, oriented towards the wider landscape rather than tucked into it, and the views here across the undulating Mayo countryside would have been as open in prehistory as they are now.

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