Barrow, Slane More, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Barrows
On a southwest-facing slope in Slane More, a roughly circular earthwork sits in a state of considerable ambiguity.
It is large enough, between 25 and 30 metres in diameter, and sufficiently raised above the surrounding ground to demand attention, yet its hollowed, irregular interior and damaged perimeter have left archaeologists genuinely uncertain about what category of monument they are looking at. Officially recorded as a barrow, a broad term for a prehistoric burial mound, the site resists that label fairly stubbornly.
When David McGuinness surveyed the monument in 2012, he found a stony bank of varying widths, reaching 7.3 metres across at the north side and rising about a metre above the external ground level. The interior is scooped out unevenly, partly because cattle have worn away the sod and disturbed the surface, and partly, it is suspected, because of road-widening works carried out around the early 1980s. A local resident, Tommy Cassidy of Slane More, confirmed that the northeast side of the monument was removed during that project, and the sheer cut visible where the bank meets the modern field boundary makes the damage plain. McGuinness suggested that what remains might better be understood as a hollowed-out cairn or mound-barrow, a type of burial monument in which stones were piled rather than earth simply heaped, rather than a conventional earthen barrow. What keeps the burial interpretation alive, despite the uncertainty, is the company the site keeps. Two further barrows lie roughly 50 and 100 metres uphill in the field across the road to the northeast, and three more occupy the hilltop about 150 metres in the same direction. Together, all six monuments trace an approximately linear arrangement running from northeast to southwest, a pattern that is difficult to read as coincidence.
The monument itself is densely overgrown, which makes surface detail hard to read, though the north side, where cattle activity has worn away the vegetation, offers the clearest view of the stony bank beneath. The stones visible in the hollowed interior may have slipped from the bank, or may represent something of the monument's original fabric, though without excavation the distinction cannot be made.