Barrow, Spittle, Co. Limerick

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Barrows

Barrow, Spittle, Co. Limerick

A shallow dip in a wet field in County Limerick is easy to overlook, and for a long time that is more or less what happened.

The earthwork recorded at Spittle never made it onto the historic Ordnance Survey Ireland maps, which means it escaped the attention of generations of map-readers and antiquarians who might otherwise have noted it down. What survives, if it survives at all in visible form, is little more than a depression at the centre of a pasture field, the kind of thing most walkers would cross without pausing.

The site was identified as a ring-barrow by Grogan in 1989, listed in that study as Spittle 2. A ring-barrow is a low, circular earthen mound, typically Bronze Age in origin, surrounded by a shallow ditch and sometimes an outer bank, used for burial or ritual purposes. The listing places it roughly 90 metres west of the townland boundary with Knockaunnacurraha. What makes the location particularly interesting is that it does not stand alone. A possible barrow lies approximately 60 metres to the northwest, and another sits around 100 metres to the west, suggesting that this quiet corner of Limerick may once have formed part of a small funerary or ceremonial landscape. The clustering of such monuments is not unusual in Irish prehistory, though here the evidence remains provisional. The designation of all three as possible rather than confirmed barrows reflects the uncertainty that comes with subtle earthworks in agricultural land.

For anyone trying to locate the site, the most practical starting point is aerial imagery. The shallow central depression noted by Martin Fitzpatrick, who compiled the record in October 2021, is visible on Google Earth orthoimages, though it reads as little more than a tonal variation in the field surface. On the ground, wet pasture makes the going heavy, particularly in autumn and winter, and there is no formal access or signage. The monument is not marked on older maps, so triangulating from the townland boundary with Knockaunnacurraha and working westward offers the best orientation. The main thing to look for, once in the right area, is a gentle hollow in the field centre, the kind of feature that rewards patience and low-angle light rather than a quick glance from the roadside.

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