Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Gleninagh, Co. Clare

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – wedge tomb, Gleninagh, Co. Clare

At the edge of Galway Bay, on a narrow rock shelf extending into the water north-west of Ballyvaghan, a small cluster of stones sits low against the ground.

Most people who pass the place, known locally as An Rinn, probably take them for ordinary coastal rubble. They are not. What lies here appears to be a wedge tomb, a type of megalithic burial monument built in Ireland during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, typically consisting of a roofed stone gallery that is wider and higher at one end and tapers toward the other. The Burren holds a remarkable concentration of them, but this one occupies an unusually marginal position, half-buried in water-rolled stones and grass on a shoreline shelf.

The tomb was brought to official attention in 2007 by Liam Moore of Ballyvaghan. What remains visible is modest but coherent: three capstones aligned roughly east-south-east to west-north-west, ranging from 0.75 to 1.1 metres in length, lying at ground level and rising slightly toward the western end. Beneath the two most westerly capstones, the tops of two upright sidestones, or orthostats, protrude just a few centimetres. Their upper edges appear dressed, that is, deliberately shaped, a detail consistent with finishing techniques observed at other Burren wedge tombs. Two transverse stones are also partly visible beneath the westernmost capstone. The bulk of the structure remains buried. Alongside this prehistoric reading of the site runs a very different local tradition: the stones are called the Spanish Graves, and are believed to mark the burial place of sailors lost in a wreck somewhere out in the harbour. The two accounts, one prehistoric, one post-medieval, are not necessarily in conflict. A prominent arrangement of old stones in an isolated spot is precisely the kind of place that absorbs new layers of memory over time.

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