Barrow (Ring Barrow), Sraharla, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Barrows

Barrow (Ring Barrow), Sraharla, Co. Cork

On a north-facing pasture slope in Sraharla, County Cork, three prehistoric burial monuments sit so close together and so worn down that you could walk across them without realising it.

The most conspicuous of the three is barely conspicuous at all: a circular area just 2.1 metres in diameter, enclosed by a shallow fosse, which is the ring-shaped ditch that gives this class of monument its name. That fosse is now only about eight centimetres deep and just over a metre wide, little more than a faint crease in the ground.

Ring barrows are Bronze Age funerary monuments, typically consisting of a low central mound or platform surrounded by a circular ditch, sometimes with an outer bank. They were places of burial and ritual, and while they are found across Ireland, their survival is uneven. Many, like these at Sraharla, have been reduced over centuries of agricultural use to near-invisibility. The three possible ring barrows here are arranged loosely in a line, the second lying roughly four metres to the southwest and the third about nine metres further in the same general direction. Their proximity suggests deliberate clustering, a practice seen elsewhere in the Irish prehistoric landscape, where the dead were gathered into shared ceremonial ground rather than buried in isolation.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Barrow (Ring Barrow), Sraharla, Co. Cork. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement