Barrow (Ring Barrow), Ross, Co. Mayo

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Barrows

Barrow (Ring Barrow), Ross, Co. Mayo

Two boulders sit embedded in the grass of a low circular platform near the shores of Killala Bay in County Mayo, the more prominent of them rising roughly forty centimetres from the centre of a ring barrow that has endured in pasture for millennia.

A ring barrow is a prehistoric funerary monument, typically a raised central platform enclosed by a surrounding ditch, known as a fosse, and an outer earthen bank, and this one conforms to the type with quiet precision. The overall structure spans approximately twenty-three metres in diameter, the central platform measuring nearly fourteen metres across and standing about sixty centimetres above the base of the fosse. The bank on the outer edge reaches its greatest height at the southern side.

The monument occupies an unassuming position on gently undulating grassland, neither elevated nor commanding in the usual sense, but its setting is not without a certain deliberate quality. Grass-covered sand dunes merge with the pasture to the north-east, and the mouth of the Palmerstown River lies close to the north-west, with Killala Bay opening out to the south-east. About a hundred metres to the north-north-east, a hillock carries a separate mound barrow on its summit, meaning the two monuments share a loose neighbourhood across this low coastal terrain. Nephin Mountain is visible to the south-south-east, and the Ox Mountains trace the far skyline across the bay. Whether those sightlines were meaningful to whoever raised the barrow is unknown, but the pairing of monuments in this landscape suggests the area held some significance over a long period of prehistory.

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Pete F
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