tombs ireland

One of the great wonders of the ancient world, Newgrange is older than Stonehenge, Mycenae or even the pyramids in Egypt. Brú na Bóinne Visitor Centre is the starting point for a tour of Newgrange....

A neat example of a wedge-tomb; it was excavated in 1957. The long rectangular burial chamber has two tall stones marking the entrance and was surrounded by a double row of stones placed in the shape of a U.

The tomb was covered by a mound of stones, the edges of which were marked by small standing stones.
The entrance facade of the tomb was straight, and in front of it lay a semicircular arrangement of stones. Some burned bones were found during the excavations....

A Passage-tomb under a mound of stones. The chamber is approached with two stones bearing concentric diamond-like motifs resembling the human face. The burial chamber has two side-chambers on each side and one at the back. One roof stone of the chamber near the entrance bears a decoration consisting of five lines. The corbelled roof of the chamber is incomplete, and entrance is most commonly effected through a hole in the top of it. The grave has probably been open for a long time, as an Ear...

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....

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)....

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....

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...

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 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....

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...