Barrow - stepped barrow, Ballywire, Co. Tipperary

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Barrow – stepped barrow, Ballywire, Co. Tipperary

A minor road cuts straight through the middle of this prehistoric burial mound in Ballywire, County Tipperary, effectively halving it.

That kind of indignity is not unusual for ancient monuments in agricultural Ireland, but what survives here still carries the distinctive profile that gives a stepped barrow its name: a low internal platform, a flattened terrace or berm, and an encircling outer bank, each element sitting at a slightly different level to create a subtle, tiered effect when viewed in section.

The surviving south-eastern half is the more legible portion, stretching roughly 18 metres along its north-east to south-west axis and about 8 metres across. A scarp nearly a metre high defines the interior, which drops gently down to a berm roughly 9 metres long before reaching the outer bank. That bank, about 9 metres wide, stands around 0.8 metres above the interior and 0.6 metres above the exterior ground surface. A gap of approximately 10 metres in the outer bank on the east-north-east side may represent an original entrance, or simply later disturbance. Drainage works have complicated the picture further: a shallow drain has been cut around the exterior of the berm, and the original fosse, the external ditch that would once have encircled the monument, appears to have been recut and pressed into service as a field drain at some point. The north-western half of the barrow has been largely levelled, though there may be the faintest trace of the outer bank still legible on the ground. The interior itself slopes gently downward from a higher point at the north-east, giving the monument a slight but consistent internal gradient.

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Pete F
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