Mound, Garranereagh, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Ritual/Ceremonial
In a tilled field in Garranereagh, mid Cork, there is a circular mound that has been accumulating other people's problems for years.
Farmers clearing their fields of loose stone have been depositing the results directly onto an ancient earthwork, until the rubble now spreads across a rough rectangle of about thirteen metres by nine, effectively burying whatever archaeological evidence the mound might once have offered up.
The mound itself appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, rendered in hachures, the fine radiating lines cartographers of the period used to indicate raised ground. The circular form, roughly twelve metres in diameter, is consistent with the kind of low earthen mound found across Ireland and associated with a broad range of prehistoric and early medieval activity, from burial monuments to platform mounds used for assembly or habitation. What this particular example represents is, for now, impossible to say with any confidence. The field clearance material, large boulders among it, has made any close examination of the monument impractical.