Barrow, Toor, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Barrows

Barrow, Toor, Co. Tipperary

A low earthwork sitting in wet, rush-filled pasture in County Tipperary is not, at first glance, an obvious place to linger.

But the site at Toor rewards attention: it is not a single burial monument but a compound of several, enclosed within a roughly circular area measuring about 21 metres north to south and 22 metres east to west, and defined by a scarp, a low bank-like edge dropping nearly a metre in height. The whole arrangement has a quiet formality that suggests deliberate, considered construction rather than anything accidental.

The enclosure is entered by a causewayed gap on the south-south-east, a break roughly four metres wide left deliberately in the surrounding fosse. A fosse, in this context, is simply a ditch cut into the ground to define and demarcate a space; here it runs from south to north and around through the east and south-east, and is most clearly legible on the south-west to north-west arc. Within this bounded interior, the north-west sector holds two ring-barrows, prehistoric burial mounds each encircled by their own ditch, while the eastern sector contains a ditch-barrow, a related but distinct form in which the mound itself is defined primarily by its surrounding ditch rather than a prominent raised heap of earth. The Shroughnagowneen stream runs immediately to the south, and a further mound lies roughly 275 metres to the north-north-east, suggesting this corner of Tipperary was, at some point in prehistory, a landscape given over in some purposeful way to the dead. The clustering of multiple monuments within a single enclosure is relatively unusual and implies that the site accumulated meaning over time, or that a community deliberately grouped its burial places together rather than scattering them across the land.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Barrow, Toor, Co. Tipperary. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement