tombs ireland

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...

Borlase graphically described this rather ungainly portal-tomb as 'a sphinx-like monster, advancing out of a rocky hill on some half-dozen short and rickety legs'. Its unusual shape immediately draws the eye, and it stands out boldly in a field which has many natural formations of large boulders. The 40-ton capstone is 22 feet long and covers an elongated chamber which yielded coarse Neolithic pottery. Immediately behind the tomb is a raised rocky ledge, and it has been suggested that the...

So named after the patron saint of sailors, St. Nicholas Collegiate church is one of Irelands oldest Parish churches. It is said that Christopher Columbus prayed here when he visited Galway in 1477. The church also boasts many beautifully carved tombs, including the tomb of James Lynch, the first Mayor of Galway.
Today, St. Nicholas' Church is still at the core of Galway city's activities. The main Galway market is held every Saturday outside the church gates. The church is also know...

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...

There may have been an early Christian monastery in the valley where, according to tradition, St. Colmcille banished demons who enveloped the valley in a fog. The most conspicuous remains are the pillars decorated with cross-motifs and geometric designs which are now the  'stations of the cross' of the pilgrimage which takes place on the Saint's feastday on June 9th. The pillars are spread over an area in the valley 3.5 miles long and the pilgrimage takes as many hours to complete.
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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....

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...

Although partly collapsed on its supports and overgrown with bracken and scrub, this is nonetheless a noble megalith.

when complete it would have stood 15 feet high at the chamber entrance, where there now survives only the broken portion of one of the great portal stones, against which the massy capstone leans, its other end resting on the ground. A second portal stone nearly 15 feet long, lies fallen alongside.

Borlase believed this to be a distinct class of tomb - an...

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....

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...