Mound, Ballythomas, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Mound, Ballythomas, Co. Wexford

A grass-covered earthen mound sitting just north of the Wicklow Gap, at the precise point where County Wexford's watershed meets the river systems draining into Derry Water, Aughrim, and Avoca, sounds like exactly the kind of feature that invites speculation.

It occupies a natural col, a low saddle of land between higher ground to the northeast and southwest, with the terrain falling away steeply to the north and northwest. Strategically, it is the sort of position that in other contexts might suggest a deliberate construction, a marker, a lookout, or a boundary feature of some kind.

The mound itself is flat-topped, roughly five metres high, with a base diameter of around fifteen metres tapering to about seven metres at the summit. A trail of material extends southeast from it, running some ten metres at a height of one to two metres, close to the line of a road that did not exist when the first Ordnance Survey mapped the area in 1839. The mound appears on the 1924 edition of the OS six-inch map but not on that earlier survey, which raises an obvious question about its origins. The honest answer, given the road-building activity that took place in the intervening decades, is that this may simply be a spoil mound, the accumulated earth shifted during construction work rather than anything of ancient significance. The landscape position is compelling, but landscape position alone does not make archaeology.

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Pete F
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