Barrow (Ring Barrow), Powerscourt Demesne, Co. Wicklow

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Barrow (Ring Barrow), Powerscourt Demesne, Co. Wicklow

On an upper slope within Powerscourt Demesne in County Wicklow, a prehistoric monument sits almost invisibly in the landscape, its three concentric ditches detectable not by eye but only through the instruments of modern geophysical survey.

This is a ring-barrow, a type of circular burial enclosure common in later prehistoric Ireland, typically consisting of a low central mound or platform ringed by one or more ditches. What makes this particular example unusual is that it appears to have three of those enclosing ditches rather than the usual one, giving the whole monument an overall diameter of approximately 25 metres, with the innermost ditch enclosing a central area of only around 8 metres across.

The site came to light in 2018 when a gradiometer survey, a form of geophysical prospection that detects subtle variations in the soil without breaking ground, was carried out by J. M. Leigh Surveys Ltd. as part of the assessment of a proposed development. Subsequent test trenching by Irish Archaeological Consultancy Ltd. confirmed the presence of all three ditches, though only two were clearly identifiable on the north-eastern side of the site. The south-western portion of the barrow appears to have been lost to agricultural ploughing over the centuries, and the shallow depth of the inner ditch, just 0.34 metres, suggests the whole monument has suffered considerable truncation. No burial or cremated remains were found during the excavation, which is not entirely surprising given the degree of disturbance. Among the small finds recovered were a quartz core, individual pieces of quartz, and a fragment of flint debitage, the waste material produced when flint is worked into tools, all retrieved from a spread of archaeological material and the fill of one of the ditches. The barrow does not stand alone in the landscape: within a few hundred metres lie an unclassified megalithic tomb, a motte castle, and St. Moling's holy well, suggesting this area was significant across multiple periods. From the monument's position, the profiles of Bray Head, the Sugar Loaf, and Djouce Mountain are all visible on the horizon.

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