Barrow (Ring Barrow), Sladoo, Co. Clare
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Barrows
For most of its recorded life, this prehistoric burial mound in Sladoo, County Clare was mistaken for something else entirely.
When it appeared on Ordnance Survey maps from 1840 and again on the 1916 edition, it was marked without particular explanation. Then, in the 1996 Record of Monuments and Places, it was listed as a cashel, which is a type of early medieval stone enclosure, typically a circular farmstead protected by a dry-stone wall. It was only later reclassification that identified it correctly as a ring-barrow, a form of prehistoric funerary monument consisting of a central burial mound enclosed by a surrounding bank and ditch. The confusion is understandable: from a distance, a weathered ring-barrow and a ruined cashel can look remarkably similar, especially once centuries of collapse, burrowing, and cattle have done their work.
The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp visited the area in 1898 and described this monument, along with a companion site, as one of two "uninjured cahers", meaning he considered them relatively intact at the time. His terminology reflects the same misidentification that persisted into the late twentieth century. The monument sits in a slight depression, sheltered by higher ground on most sides, and forms part of a wider multiperiod field system, meaning the surrounding landscape contains traces of human activity from several different eras layered on top of one another. The ring-barrow itself measures roughly 30.5 metres across its longest axis, with a central mound approximately 15 metres across. A fosse, the ditch that runs between the central mound and the outer bank, is still traceable around much of the circuit, though the southern section of the bank has been breached by a later gap nearly five metres wide. Rabbit burrows have disturbed much of the earthwork, and cattle have worn away the northern portion of the bank, exposing the underlying mixture of clay, gravel, and stone. The best-preserved stretch of bank survives to the east of that southern gap, rising to about a metre in height.