What is recorded here

Mullamast Hill in County Kildare carried five barrows, two ringforts and a standing stone before quarrying broke one, ploughing flattened another and a dump buried a third. The remaining two vanished before O'Connell's monster meeting of 1843, though that careless digging exposed a cist. What is left is a scattered hilltop mark where human hands kept taking back what the dead had stored.

A concentration of monuments along highest part of Mullamast Hill, includes a barrow cemetery of five barrows. Of these, KD036-009---- has been extensively damaged by quarrying; KD036-011---- is clearly visible as a large ploughed down barrow, and the site of KD036-014---- is used as a dump. No surface traces of the remaining two sites (KD036-012---- and KD036-012----) are now visible, but Fitzgerald in his description of the area, mentions that they were levelled before O'Connell's monster meeting of 1843 (JKAS 1891-95, 379-389), during which operation a cist was discovered (KD036-012001-). The complex also includes two ringforts; one large (KD036-008----), and one small (KD036-010----), a standing stone (KD036-017----), and two other monuments (KD036-015---- and KD036-016----) now levelled, but illustrated in Gough's edition of 'Camden's Britannia' (1789). These are described as 'a circle of small tumuli, each about four feet high, on the north side of which stands one single [sic]...' Neither of these monuments is preserved and their precise location is unknown, but they stood near the standing stone. Quarrying has damaged this barrow (est max diam. c. 25m), which lies to the S of the ringfort (KD036-008----). Visible on aerial photographs (CUCAP ALV 14, AYL 83). Date of upload: 5 September 2016

A Bronze Age barrow cemetery; part of a broader prehistoric landscape on Mullamast Hill. The site contributes to understanding of early funerary practices and settlement patterns in the region.

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