Barrow - mound barrow

The National Monuments Service's description

Surveyed in 2013 and described by McGuinness (2014, 38) as following: 'Very low, poorly defined mound with markedly oval ground-plan (Diam. 5m N-S x 9m E-W) on a low glacial knoll in undulating pastureland. Mound reaches a height of up to 0.37m on S side, where its edge is most clearly defined. An ASI fieldworker in 18/3/75 recorded ‘a large stone beside the mound on the NE’, although a colleague on 15/4/81 added that this ‘large stone or small boulder lying just NE of the mound does not appear to be of any significance’. This stone was not seen by the writer and appears to have been since removed. It is uncertain whether this mound is natural or artificial and it is accepted as a possible burial mound only on account of its proximity to a ring-/stepped-barrow (WM018-082----), lying on another knoll 135m to NE. This writer concurs with the concluding observations of the ASI fieldworker who visited the site on 15/4/81: ‘The mound is quite low and rather insignificant. No real evidence that it is an antiquity... The precise nature of the mound is not clear’. Enclosure: About 64m to S of mound is part of another curvilinear earthwork comprising an arc of broad bank 57m in length up to 5m in width, running from E to W, then veering to S, with a 2m-wide gap near the S end, on the S side of which another bank appears to run off to the NW. If this curving bank represents a segment of circular earthwork, the remainder of this continued under the road that runs alongside the field and into a ploughed field on the other side, where it appears to have been removed. The inside of this enclosure appears to have been slightly dished, as the bank rises 0.9m above the interior but only 0.7m above external ground level'.

Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien based on details provided by David McGuinness.

Date of upload: 23 February 2015

References

McGuinness, D. 2014 The prehistoric burial mounds and related monuments of County Westmeath. Part II - Monuments in central Westmeath (Barony of Rathconrath and parts of baronies of Moygoish, Moycashel, and Moyashel & Magheradernon). Unpublished survey funded by Westmeath County Council in association with Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society.