Barrow, Scregg, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Barrows
In a low-lying field in Scregg, County Mayo, there is a circular earthwork so subtle that it is genuinely difficult to say what it is.
That ambiguity is not a failure of observation; it is the thing itself. The remains are, by any measure, barely discernible, and those who have looked closely at them have stopped short of a firm classification.
What can be said is this: a roughly circular area, somewhere between eleven and twelve metres in diameter, is defined by a low bank about three metres wide. The bank stands no more than forty centimetres above the interior and only ten to twenty centimetres above the exterior ground level, and it survives best on the western half. Inside, the ground appears slightly sunken, and just off-centre in the northeast quadrant there is a slight rise of around three metres across. The working classification is a barrow, the general term for a prehistoric burial mound, though the word sits uneasily here given how little of the original form remains legible. The surrounding landscape adds its own complication: poorly drained, wet ground lies immediately to the north, while the terrain rises to the northwest and northeast, leaving the site in a quietly awkward topographical position that may or may not have been deliberate.