tombs ireland

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)....

The tombs at Fahan in Donegal have been accorded the status of National Monuments and as such their future is secure....

The monument's true nature as a court-tomb of c.3500 B.C. was only revealed during excavations in 1979-82, which removed the peat that had helped to preserve what turned out to be one of the most complete examples of its kind, and ensured its survival. The trapezoidal stone cairn over 50 feet long has a semicircular forecourt at its eastern end, at the centre of which a portal covered by a mighty capstone gave access to a triple-chambered burial gallery which had originally been roofed with cor...

The surviving burial chamber, roughly pentagonal in shape, would have been approached originally through a passage, of which little remains. Four of the upright stones of the chamber bear decorative motifs, including concentric circles, lozenges, zigzags and triangles, which resemble those found in the passage-tombs on the Loughcrew Hills in Co. Meath. Like them Knockmany probably dates from around 3000-2500 B.C. The chamber is now protected and locked within the (reconstructed) earthen mound...

Easily accessible along pathways, the latter stands at an altitude of 720 ft in the clearing of a forestry plantation which provides a splendid view across undisturbed countryside towards a great table mountain to the south-west. The tomb consists of a burial gallery subdivided into four chambers flanked at each end by a roughly semicircular forecourt. Excavations in 1938 produced a combination of Stone and Bronze Age finds including pottery and flint, while the only bones which could be ident...

Queen Maeve, the famous and fiery legendary Queen of Connacht, is said to have been buried in this great mound of stones 35 feet high and 200 feet in diameter, which is situated on the top of a hill with a magnificent view all around Co. Sligo. The mound probably hides a Passage-tomb underneath. Nearby are a number of rather ruined 'satellite' tombs, like those in the Boyne Valley....

Situated 1/2 mile west of the crossroads hamlet of Harristown and better known in the locality as Leac an Scail, this is the tallest portal-tomb in Ireland. The monumental entrance to the chamber consists of two majestic orthostats each 12 feet high, with a massive door slab set squarely between them. The pitch of the capstone is unusually steep and its front edge soars out over the portals to a point nearly 15 feet above the ground. It rests at the back on a smaller, secondary capstone, laid...

One of the most spectacular megalithic tombs of the distinctive south Leinster group, a stately Neolithic mausoleum, 'remarkable', to quote Borlase, 'for its solidity, and the perfect carrying out of a unity of design'. As a scheduled National Monument it is entitled to better care than it currently receives. 'It stands neglected in a corner of the disused burial ground of Kilburrin, 4 miles south-south-west of Waterford city, its great lichen encrusted stones emerging from a tangle of overgrow...

A Neolithic court-tomb of c.3000 B.C. with a forecourt of low stones facing south-eastwards and giving access to a two-chambered gallery placed in an ill-defined oval mound. Local tradition explains it as the grave of Finn MacCumhaill's poet-warrior son Ossian (Oisin). His faked 'songs' as 'translated' by James MacPherson in 1762-3 led to the start of the romantic movement in literature when published in Scotland, which can suitably be seen in the distance from this evocative site in the Glens...

In the parish of Abbeylara there are two well preserved remains of stone circles. There are also in this area surviving traces of what appear to be megalithic burials. There is no doubt of the antiquity of these stone circles and of their importance as archaelogical remains of the Bronze Age period of our history. They stand as memorials to those who recognised the sun as the centre of the universe, the source of all life....