Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Carraig Na Muc, Co. Cork

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – wedge tomb, Carraig Na Muc, Co. Cork

At the head of the Sruhaunphadeen valley, northeast of Douce Mountain in County Cork, a loose arrangement of ancient stones sits quietly on the valley floor.

What remains is a wedge tomb, a type of megalithic burial monument built during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, typically characterised by a gallery that narrows from one end to the other and is wider and taller at the western end. This one is poorly preserved, but the bones of its original form are still legible in the landscape.

The gallery runs northeast to southwest and measures roughly 4.2 metres in length and one metre in width. Two sidestones survive on the northern side and one on the southern, and a transverse stone near the western end may represent the remains of a portico, a small enclosed entrance area that preceded the main chamber in some wedge tomb designs. A fallen stone lying just north of the gallery is thought to have been part of an outer wall. The whole structure sits within a mound approximately eight metres in diameter, though a field fence now cuts across its eastern edge, a commonplace intrusion on monuments that have been absorbed into working farmland over the centuries. Roughly 150 metres to the east lies another megalithic tomb, unclassified, suggesting this particular valley head was a place of some significance to the communities who shaped this corner of Cork in prehistory. The site was recorded and described by Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin in their 1982 survey of megalithic tombs across Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Tipperary, a landmark work that systematically catalogued monuments which had previously received little formal attention.

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