Megalithic tomb, Garryduff (Coonagh By.), Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Megalithic Tombs
Somewhere in the townland of Garryduff in County Limerick's Coonagh Barony, a prehistoric tomb has managed to disappear almost entirely from the record.
It does not appear on Ordnance Survey Ireland's historic maps, and aerial imagery taken between 2005 and 2018, including captures by OSi, Digital Globe, and Google Earth, shows nothing but tree canopy where the structure ought to be. The monument is not lost, exactly; it has simply been absorbed, layer by layer, into the landscape around it.
When archaeologists from the Archaeological Survey of Ireland visited the site in 2008, they recorded the collapsed remains of what had once been a megalithic tomb, a burial structure built from large upright stones and typically capped with a single massive slab, constructed during the Neolithic or early Bronze Age. Three principal limestone megaliths survive. The largest, measuring roughly 2.7 metres east to west and standing to around 1.45 metres, appears to be set into the ground, with a second stone, possibly a fallen capstone, leaning against its south-eastern side. A third, smaller megalith sits embedded in the ground immediately to the north, and two further stones lie close by to the north and north-west. Scattered smaller rocks cluster along the monument's northern side. What gives the site an additional layer of interest is its position: the tomb sits within the centre of an earthwork, a separate enclosure monument catalogued separately in the national record, suggesting the location carried significance across more than one period or purpose. The stream running just to the north forms the boundary with the neighbouring townland of Ballyvalode, and the ground throughout is poorly drained, which goes some way to explaining both the density of vegetation and the depth of moss covering the southern and south-eastern faces of the stones.
Accessing this monument requires patience and a tolerance for wet ground. The poorly drained field conditions mean the area around the stones can be waterlogged for much of the year, and the enclosing trees and vegetation make the structure effectively invisible until you are very close to it. There is no marker, no signage, and no clear path. A visit is best attempted in late autumn or winter, when lower vegetation gives a slightly better chance of locating the stones, though the canopy will still obscure the site from above. The survey record compiled by Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly, uploaded to the national database in October 2020, remains the most detailed account of what is actually there, and consulting it beforehand will help orient anyone determined to find it.