Barrow, Knocklong East, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Barrows
There is something quietly unsettling about an ancient monument that exists primarily as an absence.
In a field of reclaimed pasture in Knocklong East, County Limerick, a possible prehistoric burial mound sits in the archaeological record without leaving so much as a bump in the ground. No earthwork survives, no ring of stones, no obvious sign to the casual walker that anything lies beneath. What is known about it comes not from excavation or survey on foot, but from a single aerial photograph taken on a November day in 1984.
The site was identified as a circular cropmark feature on aerial photographs commissioned by Bórd Gáis Éireann during survey work for the Curraleigh West to Limerick gas pipeline. Cropmarks of this kind appear when buried archaeology affects the growth of vegetation above it, producing patterns visible from the air that are invisible at ground level. The images, catalogued as BGE 1/5000 2570 and 2569, suggested both a possible barrow and a related enclosure nearby. A barrow, in its simplest form, is a mound of earth raised over a burial, one of the most widespread prehistoric monument types in Ireland and across Europe, typically dating from the Neolithic through to the early medieval period. The possible barrow sits roughly thirty metres to the west of a second feature, a possible enclosure, which lies around one hundred metres to the east. Neither feature appears on Ordnance Survey Ireland historic maps, and by the time satellite imagery was captured between 2011 and 2013, no surface trace was visible at all. The record was compiled by Fiona Rooney and uploaded to the Sites and Monuments Record in June 2021.
For anyone visiting the area, there is no meaningful surface to seek out. The land has been reclaimed as pasture and the site presents as ordinary farmland. What gives the place its interest is precisely that quality of invisibility, the fact that an entire layer of possible prehistory was captured once, briefly, in the light conditions of an autumn morning nearly forty years ago, and has since effectively vanished back into the ground. The site’s existence as an entry in the national monument record, cross-referenced to a pipeline survey photograph rather than any conventional fieldwork, says as much about how Irish archaeology is documented as it does about any particular ancient activity on this patch of south Limerick ground.
In a field of reclaimed pasture in Knocklong East, County Limerick, a possible prehistoric burial mound sits in the archaeological record without leaving so much as a bump in the ground. No earthwork survives, no ring of stones, no obvious sign to the casual walker that anything lies beneath. What is known about it comes not from excavation or survey on foot, but from a single aerial photograph taken on a November day in 1984.
The site was identified as a circular cropmark feature on aerial photographs commissioned by Bórd Gáis Éireann during survey work for the Curraleigh West to Limerick gas pipeline. Cropmarks of this kind appear when buried archaeology affects the growth of vegetation above it, producing patterns visible from the air that are invisible at ground level. The images, catalogued as BGE 1/5000 2570 and 2569, suggested both a possible barrow and a related enclosure nearby. A barrow, in its simplest form, is a mound of earth raised over a burial, one of the most widespread prehistoric monument types in Ireland and across Europe, typically dating from the Neolithic through to the early medieval period. The possible barrow sits roughly thirty metres to the west of a second feature, a possible enclosure, which lies around one hundred metres to the east. Neither feature appears on Ordnance Survey Ireland historic maps, and by the time satellite imagery was captured between 2011 and 2013, no surface trace was visible at all. The record was compiled by Fiona Rooney and uploaded to the Sites and Monuments Record in June 2021.
For anyone visiting the area, there is no meaningful surface to seek out. The land has been reclaimed as pasture and the site presents as ordinary farmland. What gives the place its interest is precisely that quality of invisibility, the fact that an entire layer of possible prehistory was captured once, briefly, in the light conditions of an autumn morning nearly forty years ago, and has since effectively vanished back into the ground. The site's existence as an entry in the national monument record, cross-referenced to a pipeline survey photograph rather than any conventional fieldwork, says as much about how Irish archaeology is documented as it does about any particular ancient activity on this patch of south Limerick ground.
Visitor Notes
Added by
