Mound, Drinagh, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Ritual/Ceremonial
On the 1925 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, a circular mound sits quietly in the flat landscape near Drinagh in County Wexford, drawn with enough confidence to suggest something worth recording.
It measured roughly 35 metres across at its base and, according to local accounts, stood about six metres tall. That is a substantial presence on level ground, the kind of earthwork that might prompt speculation about ancient burial or ritual use. The reality, as far as anyone can determine, was considerably more mundane.
The mound was almost certainly a spoil heap, the accumulated waste material thrown up by the quarries that flanked it on two sides, one roughly 20 metres to the west and another about 40 metres to the south. Its appearance on a single map edition, without any earlier cartographic trace, is consistent with that interpretation; these things accumulate gradually and can reach considerable size before anyone thinks to document them. Whatever its origins, the question became academic around 1970, when the mound was removed entirely. It survives now only as a record and a contour on an old sheet of paper. Drinagh church still stands about 70 metres to the north-north-west, a more durable neighbour that outlasted the mound by some margin.