Barrow (Ring Barrow), Tubrid Beg, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Barrows
In a field at Tubrid Beg in north County Kerry, a prehistoric burial monument survives only in part, its eastern half having been gradually erased by centuries of ploughing.
What remains is enough to read the original form: a ring-barrow, which is a low circular mound enclosed by a bank and a fosse, the fosse being the shallow ditch cut between the outer bank and the raised central area. These monuments are generally associated with Bronze Age funerary practice, though their precise function varied; some covered cremated remains, others served as territorial or ceremonial markers. Here, the surviving arc runs from the north, around through the west, to the south-west, preserving just enough geometry to suggest what once stood complete.
The surviving bank still reaches 1.2 metres in external height, with a base width of 4.4 metres and an internal height of 0.8 metres. The fosse between the bank and the inner platform measures 1.6 metres across and sits roughly 0.6 metres below the level of the internal area. These are modest but legible dimensions. What makes the site particularly worth noting is that it forms a pair: a second ring-barrow lies immediately to the north. Such paired or grouped barrows are not unusual in the Irish landscape, and their proximity to one another often suggests they were constructed within the same community or period, perhaps marking adjacent burials or related ritual use of the same ground. The site was documented as part of the North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995 by C. Toal.