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| Court-tombs = Portal-tombs = Wedge-tombs = Passage-tombs = Stone Circles | France | |
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GAZETTEER of
SELECTED MONUMENTS IN
Place-names in italics refer to listed entries.
Carrickglass: Portal-tomb
click on the thumbnail for a larger picture
Known as "The Labby [Rock]", ( 'Labby ' is an anglicisation of the Irish word for 'bed' - as in 'Dermot and Grania's Bed' , this tomb, 7 kms SE of Riverstown and 7.2 kms NNW of Ballyfarnon, is best found by following the signs for "Cromlech Lodge" from Castlebaldwin. It is situated in the hollow of a field 1200 metres S of Lough Nasool, across three rough fields to the W of a by-road, this remarkable megalith has a huge limestone capstone 2.5 metres thick, 4.5 metres long, and 2.75 metres wide, weighing some 70 tonnes. It is a veritable hanging garden of vegetation, and appears to be driving the ridiculously puny portal-stones and backstone into the soft ground. The entrance is marked by a low thin door-slab. ~ 2.4 km W is the huge cairn of Heapstown .
Carrowkeel-Keshcorran: Passage-tomb complex
Approached via a tarred track leading E from a by-road running from North to South through the hills, and well-signposted this megalithic cemetery is superbly situated on limestone ridges in different townlands, of which Carrowkeel is only one. There are cairns in Keshcorran to the W, as well as a dozen tombs and two megalithic kists in the main necropolis, which has clearly been laid out with an eye to the unique landscape of rocky spurs. There are magnificent views from the cairns over Lough Arrow to the E, and N to Knocknarea and Ben Bulben. Some of the rock-faces are steep, and there are extensive patches of peat-bog and heather on the ridges and in the deep fissures.
Of the other tombs, Cairn F (partly ruined) is the finest, with double-transepted chamber shaped like a Cross of Lorraine, and a roof of corbels assisted by squinches and packing-stones. Between the inner pair of recesses was a broken pillarstone, at the butt-end of whose fallen portion human ashes had been placed. In this and some other tombs some of the large stones are of sandstone. These may have been placed at points of particular stress where limestone would soon collapse. In fact, some of the lintels in Cairn K are cracked and dangerous. Cairn G has a 'light-box' of earlier and cruder construction than the famous one at Newgrange.
Whereas the Newgrange box permits a shaft of light to penetrate along the passage of the tomb into the chamber at the winter Solstice, the Carrowkeel one was designed to "trap" the light of the setting sun at summer Solstice, and the light of the setting moon at the winter solstice and Lunar Extremes.
On a commanding ridge to the NE is a cluster of nearly 50 stone rings known as "the village". Some are too large to have been roofed, so they may have been tent-shelters. There is no evidence to connect them with the same early Neolithic period as the supposed necropolis.
Below "the village", in
Mullaghfarna
, is an undisturbed wedge-tomb.
Carrowmore: Megalithic complex
Although concentrated in the townland of Carrowmore (rather too close to the county town of Sligo for its preservation), there are also passage-tombs in other neighbouring townlands - most of them ruined and looking like portal-tombs. The cemetery is dominated by the kerbed tumulus of
Misgán Méadbha
(Maeve's Cairn, Lump or Pimple) on the summit of Knocknarea: unopened but almost certainly containing a passage-tomb. It is 55 metres in diameter, over 10 metres high and round about it are the remains of several tombs and cairns. The Carrowmore necropolis may have had as many as 80 sepulchres originally; now only 60 can be traced, because of gravel quarrying and other schemes such as municipal dumping to fill in gravel pits! They are now protected, and there is (of course) a Visitor Centre.
The Sligo passage-tombs belong to different periods. The earliest are the simple 'boulder-circles' of Carrowmore.
click the thumbnail for larger pictures
These may be the ancestors of all the
stone circles
of Atlantic Europe, which enclosed simple small boulder-built chambers. Occupying the edge of Carrowmore plateau, these mostly align towards a 'ritual centre', and were not built to impress or be seen from afar.
They have been interpreted as quiet sacred places of an egalitarian society which lived close by, on especially-good land with a climate favoured (rather than battered) by the sea, which was also, of course, the main highway until late mediæval times. This might have been a matriarchal society which inevitably made the mistake of allowing boys to form secret societies and play with big stones - and big clubs. Later on, tombs with high visibility and prestige were built away from Carrowmore on the Slieve Gamph or Ox Mountains to the SW. Some of them had more complex cruciform chambers and large cairns. The dead are now distanced and elevated from a more stratified society with a labouring class, and the houses of the dead no longer fit into the landscape, but dominate it. The third phase is represented by the huge cairns of Misgán Méadbha on Knocknarea, and Listoghil in Carrowmore. These complex monuments required huge labour-resources, and must have been built by a fairly totalitarian society. Later still, the highly visible hilltop cairns on Carrowkeel, all supervised by the all-seeing and probably baleful eye of Misgán Méadbha , were built as a kind of new necropolitan annexe to the already venerable sacred area of Carrowmore.
The best way to view the Carrowmore Sacred Landscape is to walk along the by-road which runs North-South to the W of Cloverhill House. Many of the denuded tombs and kerbs (which of course are not stone circles), including Listoghil, can be viewed to the W.
Sligo town itself occupies the area most favoured for living and burying in Neolithic times.
~
In
Cloverhill
, to the S of the main cemetery, and on the other side of the road from Cloverhill House, near a former schoolhouse (G 671 335) is a roofless and shamelessly-neglected small tomb which is decorated with worn curvilinear ornament on three of its orthostats. A fourth decorated stone, removed in 1832, is now in the wall of an out-building attached to the old school nearby.
click on the thumbnail for a larger picture
Recommended reading on both the Carrowkeel and Carrowmore complexes is Stefan Bergh's
Carrowreagh : Court-tomb
3.2 kms NW of Aclare, at a height of about 250 metres and extremely difficult to locate across featureless bog lie two court-tombs embedded in the peat. The more southerly (to which the grid reference above applies) is probably the best-preserved in Ireland. Entry can be made only through a small hole in the roof, which is corbelled with high-pitched slabs in two and three tiers over low orthostats. As with the tomb in
Carrowleagh
in county Mayo (some 9.6 kms NNW) the court is entirely concealed by cairn and bog.
~ 6.4 km SW is the fine wedge-tomb in Carrowcrom, Mayo.
Clogher: Stone Fort
Known as "Cashelmore", the fort is inside the Coolavin Estate almost 15 km SSW of Boyle, romantically sited amongst trees, and approached through a gate. It was restored in the 19th century and is built of stones which get smaller as they get higher. Inside are three sets of steps leading to the ramparts, three wall-niches, and two souterrains.
Creevykeel: Full-court tomb
This very fine, excavated tomb lies immediately E of the noisy and busy main road from Sligo to Bundoran, a few metres N of Creevykeel Crossroads. It is contained in a wedge-shaped cairn which was originally nearly 60metres long. The broad end faces roughly E, and from it a short passage leads into a large oval court (with somedry-walling) about 15 metres long. This in turn leads into a 2-chambered gallery with vestiges of corbelling in the rear chamber. Only those orthostats nearest the entrance to the gallery are of megalithic proportions, some of them 1.8 metres high. Behind the gallery are the remains of 3 single-chambered subsidiary tombs, apparently built at the same time as the rest of the monument. On the S side the cairn is double. On the NW part of the court are the remains of a much later kiln, and evidence of iron-smelting was found there when the tomb was excavated.
~ 3.2 km SW in Cartronplank , behind a house about 100 metres E of the road from Cliffony to Drumcliff is "Tombavannor" an overgrown court-tomb resembling those at Shalwy and Croaghbeg in Donegal, with a massively-constructed gallery of 2 chambers, good entry-jambs and a very large gabled backstone some 2 metres high. Only a few stones of the court, decreasing in height from the entrance, survive amongst the vegetation. ~ 12.8 kms SSW in Drumcliff , on the other side of the road to the 12 th century cross and Yeats' grave ("- horseman, pass by!") , 200 metres W of the bridge over the Owney river, 100 metres downstream from the 'Yeats Tavern', and near the N bank beside a grove of cherry-trees, is a large wedge-tomb with trees growing through it, whose main chamber is almost 7 metres long, over which one (slipped) capstone survives. There is an antechamber or portico and a good façade of stones about one metre high.
Dartry: Wedge-tomb
Situated on the gradual W slope of Truskmore Mountain, this is one of several megalithic tombs to be discovered recently. It is an almost-intact wedge-tomb with all the classic characteristics of kerb, double-walling and portico/antechamber, though the entrance is still hidden in peat.
~ Just over 11 kms NE is the well-preserved court-tomb at Shasgar in county Leitrim.
Heapstown: Cairn
Immediately to the E of a by-road leading to Riverstown is a huge cairn over 60 metres in diameter and 6 metres high - said locally to have been piled up on a single night by non-human forces. Being on low ground, its enormous size and massive kerb suggest that, like Listoghil in Carrowmore (above), it contains a passage-tomb.
There are reports of decorated stones and an ogam stone which used to be near the cairn. A kerbstone on the S side has barely-decipherable glyphs. (For a discussion of the Sligo passage-tombs, see Carrowmore, above.) ~ 2.4 km E is Carrickglass Portal-tomb. ~ Three crannógs in Lough Arrow are marked on sheet 25.
Magheraghanrush
or
Deerpark: Centre-court tomb
The fine views to be had from this huge tomb are now blocked by insensitive planting of dreary conifer forest, which is to the S of the road from Leckaun to Sligo (6.4 kms to the E). On the top of a ridge overlooking Colgagh Lough, the tomb has an impressive central court 15 metres long, from which 3 two-chambered galleries extend to give the tomb a length of 30 metres. Two are on the E side and one on the W. One of the E galleries still has a lintel in place (though broken) above the jamb-stones. The court is entered from the S side, and the tomb (also known as
Leacht Con Mhic Ruis
) has some similarities with the tomb at
Ballyglass
, county Mayo.
Below the monument, approached by the path from which the path to the court-tomb branched off, are other remains including a ruined wedge-tomb, a souterrain, and a stone fort with souterrain which offers splendid views.
Slieve Dargan (Carrownamaddo and Castledargan townlands): Passage-tomb
'Calliagh a Vera's [Caillech Bhéarra's] House' on the flat summit of the westernmost height of Slieve Dargan is a rectangular, slab-roofed chamber which is entered from the SSW through a cairn whose diameter is now 15 metres in diameter and 2 metres high. At least 4 large kerbstones survive on the N side of the cairn, which was built in the second phase of passage-tomb construction in county Sligo. Tawnatruffaun: Portal-tomb G 400 282 Sheet 24
Visible a few hundred metres E of a by-road following the valley of the Owenwee river, 8 km SW of Dromore West, this tomb known as
The Giant's Griddle
has a fine slab-like capstone 2.8 metres long, tilted appropriately and resting on 2 well-matched portal-stones about 1.5 metres high (between which is a low 'half-door' stone) and only just resting on the backstone. One of the sidestones has disappeared, allowing the chamber to be seen clearly.
Cup-and-ring designs are reputed to be on two stones of the wall/fence in which The Giant's Griddle is incorporated. |
