tombs ireland

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....

A large well-preserved court-tomb with a more than semicircular forecourt formed of large boulders, and located on a ridge 700 feet high with a fine view ofer the Bann valley. Behind the forecourt is a broad burial-gallery of two separate chambers, with one set of jambs immediately inside the portal stones and a further set dividing the gallery which still carry their ponderous capstone. The kerb of the mound is still well defined by upright stones, and within it - and behind the chamber - is...

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...

Occupying a commanding hill-top overlooking islanded Lough Gill to the south and pretty Colgagh Lake to the west, this large and imposing monument is perhaps the best example of a centre court-tomb in the country. Its traditional name, by which it is still known hereabouts, is Leacht Con Mhic Ruis. The oval court, 50 feet in length with an entrance on the south side, has two segmented galleries at its east end and one at the west. In the last century all three galleries had large lintel stones...

This 'classic' example of a dual court-tomb overlooks Strangford Lough almost 6 miles north-east of Downpatrick. The basic unit of a forecourt giving access to a gallery divided into four burial chambers is repeated at each end of a long, wedge-shaped mound, so that the two individual units almost but do not quite meet back to back near the centre of the mound. A minimum of 17 individuals were found buried in each gallery, but all were disarticulated in such a way as to suggest that they must...

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

A Stone Age megalithic tomb built possibly around 3000 B.C. consisting of a 'court' at the eastern end and a burial chamber which is dived into four parts....

Improbable though it may seem, this interesting megalithic tomb was lived in by a family in the nineteenth century, a purpose to which its large interior was suited and possibly to some extent modified. Gaps between the side-stones were windproofed with turf and mud, and no doubt the resulting 'house' was as snug as some of the tiny cabins occupied around the time of the Great Famine. The presence of a horse in the photograph is a reminder too that these ancient structures not infrequently serv...

Together with Knowth and Newgrange, this mound forms part of the great Passage-tomb cemetery beside the lower stretches of the Boyne. The mound has a diameter of 280 feet and is 50 feet high. A number of the stones surrounding the bottom of the mound can still be seen, some of them bearing ornamentation. There are two prehistoric tombs in the western part of the mound, dating from about 3000 B.C. One of these is reached by climbing down a ladder in an iron cage; it has a long passage, with so...