Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Loughscur, Co. Leitrim
Co. Leitrim |
Megalithic Tombs
What remains of this prehistoric tomb near Lough Scur is, by most measures, a fragment: the southern wall and part of the western side of what was once a rectangular megalithic structure, sitting quietly on a slight rise in open pastureland.
Wedge tombs are among the most common megalithic tomb types in Ireland, built during the late Neolithic and into the Bronze Age, and typically named for the way their chambers taper in both height and width from one end to the other. This particular example measures roughly seven metres east to west and about 2.7 metres north to south, though those dimensions describe the original plan rather than what a visitor would now see standing in the field.
The tomb is constructed from contiguous orthostats, upright slabs of stone set edge to edge to form the chamber walls, the largest of which reach about 1.2 metres in length and half a metre in height. Several stones have been displaced over time and now lie scattered nearby, the largest measuring 1.5 metres by one metre. Beneath and around the surviving stonework, a grass-covered mound persists, its base extending 17 metres east to west and 12.5 metres north to south, and rising to around one metre at its northern edge. That mound is the tomb's original cairn material, now softened by centuries of turf growth, and its survival gives some sense of the structure's original scale. The western end of Lough Scur lies roughly a quarter of a kilometre to the north-east, and the tomb occupies a broad valley running east to west, a landscape that would have looked quite different when the monument was first raised, perhaps four or five thousand years ago. Michael J. Moore's Archaeological Inventory of County Leitrim, published in 2003, provides the formal record of the site's current condition and dimensions.