Barrow - mound barrow, Clogher, Co. Mayo

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Barrow – mound barrow, Clogher, Co. Mayo

A low earthen mound rising from thistle-covered pasture in Clogher, County Mayo, is easy to walk past without a second glance.

It measures roughly ten metres across and stands only a fraction of a metre high at its worn scarp edge, which is to say it barely interrupts the ground at all. But its flat top, about seven metres in diameter, and a small circular depression near its south-eastern edge mark it out as a mound barrow, a prehistoric funerary monument raised over the dead, in some cases several thousand years ago. These earthen barrows were built to endure, and this one has, even if time and the slow pressure of agricultural land use have softened it almost to invisibility.

What gives the site a quiet distinction is its position in the landscape. The ground falls gradually to the east, opening out over gently rolling terrain, and to the west-southwest the summit of Croagh Patrick lifts above the ridge of the Partry Mountains on the far horizon. Whether those who raised the mound were conscious of that sightline is impossible to say, but the alignment is striking. Closer at hand, about ten metres to the north-west, sits a possible ringbarrow, a related but distinct monument type in which a low bank and internal ditch define a roughly circular enclosure, also used for burial. The proximity of the two features suggests this patch of Mayo pasture may once have formed part of a small funerary landscape, a cluster of monuments rather than a single isolated grave.

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Pete F
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