Boulder-burial, Derrymihin, Co. Cork

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Burial Sites

Boulder-burial, Derrymihin, Co. Cork

On a terrace near the southern foot of Maulin mountain, overlooking Bear Haven on the Beara Peninsula, four prehistoric boulder burials sit in open pasture in an arrangement that is quietly, geometrically odd.

Three of them stand just two metres apart from one another, positioned at the points of an equilateral triangle. The fourth lies roughly twenty metres to the south-west, absorbed into a field boundary fence, as though the landscape simply grew up around it over the centuries.

Boulder burials are a monument type found almost exclusively in the south-west of Ireland, consisting of a large flat or rounded boulder raised above the ground on smaller support stones, typically covering a burial deposit beneath. They belong broadly to the Bronze Age. What makes the Derrymihin group notable is not just its numbers but the precision of its layout. The three monuments in the triangle each carry a substantial cover-stone: the eastern one measures 2.2 metres by 1.6 metres and has three visible support stones beneath it; the northern has a cover-stone of 1.7 metres by 1.3 metres resting on two supports; the western, roughly square at 1.5 metres by 1.5 metres, sits on a single support stone. The fourth, now partly built into the field fence, has a cover-stone of 1.9 metres by 1.7 metres and two visible support stones. The grouping was recorded by Ó Nualláin in 1978, and the triangular arrangement in particular suggests an intentional spatial relationship between the three monuments rather than casual proximity.

The site sits in farmland, and the fence-incorporated fourth burial is a reminder of how agricultural life has shaped and shifted around these structures over millennia. The view south towards Bear Haven would have been as open in the Bronze Age as it is now, which may or may not have mattered to whoever chose this terrace, but it gives the place a particular quality of exposure, the monuments sitting out in the open with nothing much to shelter them.

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