Mound, Cahercorney, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Mound, Cahercorney, Co. Limerick

A low, sub-rectangular mound sitting on gently sloping ground in County Limerick managed to escape notice on Ordnance Survey historic maps entirely, which is itself a curious thing.

It sits roughly 260 metres east-northeast of Cahercorney Church and its associated graveyard, on ground that falls away toward the east, where a stream runs northward before joining the Camoge River some 750 metres distant. The mound is not dramatic in scale; its external dimensions run approximately 10 metres on the northeast-southwest axis and 16.5 metres on the northwest-southeast, and it is encircled by a fosse, the term used for a ditch or trench that typically defines or defends an earthwork feature. What makes it quietly significant is not any single characteristic, but the fact that it belongs to a dense cluster of monuments that nobody fully appreciated until relatively recently.

The broader complex around Cahercorney was first recorded by the archaeologist M. J. O'Kelly in 1942 and 1943, who documented twelve monuments in the area. O'Kelly is better known for his later excavations at Newgrange, but his earlier survey work across Munster was methodical and wide-ranging. The mound itself, however, did not appear in that original survey. It was the Discovery Programme, an Irish state-funded archaeological research body established to investigate major prehistoric landscapes, that eventually identified it as a distinct site during work on the North Munster Project, published by Eoin Grogan in 2005. The site received the reference number LI032-073014-, distinguishing it from the earlier dozen. The record was compiled by Edmond O'Donovan and uploaded to the national monuments database in November 2020.

The mound is not signposted and is set within agricultural land, so a visitor should approach with appropriate caution about access and ground conditions. Its presence is most clearly confirmed through aerial and satellite imagery; it appears on Ordnance Survey orthoimages from the 2005 to 2012 period, on Digital Globe imagery from 2011 to 2013, and on several Google Earth captures taken in April 2006, May 2017, and September 2020. On the ground, in the right light and at the right time of year, when vegetation is low and shadows are long, the surrounding fosse becomes legible as a slight depression tracing the mound's perimeter. The church and graveyard nearby offer a more accessible starting point for anyone exploring this corner of Limerick, with the mound lying a short distance to the east across open ground.

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