tombs ireland

A megalithic gallery-grave allied to the wedge-tombs; it consisted of a roughly rectangular chamber and a small ante-chamber set in an oval mound of stones, dating probably to the earlier part of the second millennium B.C. Later in the same millennium burials took place and a fireplace was constructed....

Follow the signs for Carrowkeel, west of the village is Castlebaldwin, as the tar road gives way to a grassy track the stark, jutting cliff faces before you have a cathedral majesty which must have held a magic for the great Stone Age architects of these remarkable tombs. You leave the car at the apex of this track and climb by foot the short distance to the top of Bricklieve Mountain. All but one of the cairns you see scattered over the hillside are passage graves; the other covers a court to...

This court-tomb is unusual in having a forecourt forming almost three-quarters of a circle, with the largest stones near the end of the 'horns'. The court gave access to a now roofless three-chambered burial gallery, of which that next the entrance was not used for burials. Excavations in 1962 showed the end-chamber to have been undisturbed and to contain cremated bone as well as a curious dark brown layer which has been encountered in other ulster court-tomb excavations. Unexpectedly, these c...

A megalithic tomb consisting of a rectangular chamber and what seems like a forecourt. The forecourt wall is made of drystone walling. The unusual feature of this tomb is the stone blocking the entrance to the tomb, at the bottom of which is a 'port hole' - presumably to allow subsequent burials to take place. The whole is surrounded by the remains of a cairn 60 feet long, The tomb was excavated, but the results were never published....

One of a small group of portal tombs which have two capstones 9others include Knockeen in Waterford, Kilmogue in Kilkenny and the Kempe Stones in Down). Like many 'dolmens' it stands in a hollow, so that the visitor's initial view of it is from above. The main capstone is 9 feet long and rests at the front on the single remaining portal stone, 6 feet high, on which a small Christian cross has been inscribed, apparently recently. The lower capstone is supported on the chamber uprights and, as i...

A wedge-shaped megalithic tomb with a rectangular chamber divided into three unequal parts, and set into a wedge-shaped cairn bounded by standing stones, and the whole placed in a double-walled U-shaped setting of large stones.
Cremated bone and pottery were found inside. The date of the tomb has been assigned to the Early Bronze Age (c.1700 B. C)....

One of the most aesthetically satisfying megalithic structures of the Irish countryside, a 4,000 year-old Neolithic tomb that might equally be a work of modern sculpture. If proof were needed that Stone Age man built his monuments to impress as well as to last, then here it is. Its rugged geometry has long been admired, and illustrations of it have appeared in innumerable publications as well as in television commercials promoting tourism and butter. It was Fergusson who coined the term 'tripo...

In this great mound about 40 feet high and 220 feet in diameter two great Passage-tombs were discovered in 1967 and 1968. One of the chambers is corbelled, like that at Newgrange, and is round and has side-chambers; the other has a flat roof and looks like little more than a widening of the passage. Both graves are richly decorated with megalithic art, as are also many of the kerbstones surrounding the base of the large mound. The entrances to the tombs were considerably disturbed in the Earl...

What may at first seem like a low dolmen on a hillock overlooking Loughin island lake at a cross-roads on the Seaforde-Crossgar road is, in fact, a large, low capstone resting on a number of smaller stones. These may once have been part of a passage-tomb, as an account of 1802 talks of it being beneath a cairn 60ft in diameter and having a lintelled passage approaching it....

Translated as the Old Womans Bed, this Dolman is located outside Glanworth.

It is a huge wedge shaped gallery grave that dates back to the prehistoric phenomemon of Megalithic tombs....