Megalithic tomb, Raheen (Coshma By.), Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb, Raheen (Coshma By.), Co. Limerick

Somewhere in the woodland of a former Limerick demesne, a prehistoric tomb sits in a state of such advanced ruin that aerial photography cannot find it.

It does not appear on Ordnance Survey orthophotographs taken between 2005 and 2012, nor on Google Earth imagery, which makes the fact that it was recorded in print twice during the twentieth century all the more striking. What survives, or once survived, is a scatter of large stones that scholars have struggled to classify, embedded in the trees of the old Cahir Guillamore estate in the townland of Raheen, barony of Coshma, County Limerick.

The tomb was described in 1942 by Ó Ríordáin and Hunt, who noted the remains cautiously, writing that it was unclear what type of tomb was represented, though it appeared to have been a gallery grave, a long rectangular megalithic chamber typically roofed with capstones and used for communal burial during the Neolithic period, with a recorded length of approximately 16 feet, or 4.8 metres. Nearly half a century later, Eoin Grogan revisited the classification in 1989 and recorded it instead as a possible wedge-tomb, a different form of megalithic structure, usually wedge-shaped in plan and associated with the later Neolithic and early Bronze Age. The fact that two separate surveys arrived at different conclusions points less to scholarly disagreement than to how thoroughly the monument had already deteriorated by the time either scholar reached it. The tomb sits 150 metres south-east of the townland boundary with Caherguillamore, within the north-eastern edge of an associated field system, and roughly 160 metres north-west of a cashel, a stone-walled early medieval enclosure, suggesting a landscape that was in use across several distinct periods.

Access to the site is complicated by its location within the former demesne woodland of Cahir Guillamore House, with Rockbarton House lying approximately 500 metres to the south. Because the monument does not resolve in aerial imagery, anyone attempting to locate it on the ground would be working from mapped coordinates rather than any visible profile. Winter or early spring, when leaf cover is thinner, would offer the best conditions for picking out stonework in woodland. The tomb is catalogued and mapped, labelled as Site 5 in the associated survey record, but it should be approached with the expectation that what remains may be very little indeed.

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