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Little Curragh I : Barrow

CountyKildare
Grid RefN 741 141
GPSN 74077 14088 (3m)
Longitude6° 53' 31.54" W
Latitude53° 10' 19.7" N
ITM east480366
ITM north584435
Nearest TownKildare (1.5 Km)
OS Sheet55
UTM zone29U
UTM x449041
UTM y5761192

This is a subsite of:

Little Curragh I - Ring Fort
Hide map  (N.B. Google Maps & GPS readings are slightly out of sync - position is approximate)
Show inline map (by Google Maps)

Visit Notes

Sunday, 7th February 2010

This barrow is situated in the centre of a large rath or ring fort, seemingly shoehorned in between two golf course greens. The central area is about 10m across and the bank and fosse is very clearly defined. The fosse is over 1m deep and 1m across. There are traces of other banks around the barrow that quickly diminish into the raths inner platform.

Large gorse bushes and lines of trees block the views from this site, so it's hard to judge the relation ship between it and the other monuments in the area.

The big question here is: was the barrow placed within the rath/ring fort when it went out of use or was the rath erected around the barrow? This little complex could be a very important one in the context of the whole Curragh/Little Curragh complex.

A barrow is essentially a mound of earth over one or more burials. They are more usually to be dated to the Bronze Age. There are many forms of barrow including ring, bowl, long and bell barrows.

Ring barrows are formed by digging a circular trench or fosse around a central burial, with no mound.

Bowl barrows are formed by heaping up soil over the burial(s) from a surrounding fosse, these often have an external bank too (see Ballyremon Commons (County Wicklow)).

Bell barows are simply round mounds with no fosse or external bank.

Long barrows are rare in Ireland and are more common in southwest England. Their shape is basically ovoid rather than round (see Ballynoe (County Down))

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About Coordinates Displayed

This is an explanation of (and a bit of a disclaimer for) the coordinates I provide.

Where a GPS figure is given this is the master for all other coordinates. According to my Garmin these are quite accurate.

Where there is no GPS figure the 6 figure grid reference is master for the others. This may not be very accurate as it could have come from the OS maps and could have been read by eye. Consequently, all other cordinates are going to have inaccuracies.

The calculation of Longitude and Latitude uses an algorithm that is not 100% accurate. The long/lat figures are used as a basis for calculating the UTM & ITM coordinates. Consequently, UTM & ITM coordinates are slightly out.

UTM is a global coordinate system - Universal Transverse Mercator - that is at the core of the GPS system.

ITM is the new coordinate system - Irish Transverse Mercator - that is more accurate and more GPS friendly than the Irish Grid Reference system. This will be used on the next generation of Irish OS maps.
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