Cairn, Cappaphaudeen, Co. Cork
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Cairns
On a north-east-facing pasture slope in Cappaphaudeen, a small oval mound sits quietly in the grass, unremarkable at first glance but carrying the compressed evidence of a prehistoric burial.
The mound measures roughly four metres east to west and just under two and a half metres north to south, rising to less than seventy centimetres at its highest point. What makes it quietly strange is the crescent-shaped arc of cairn material along its southern side, which suggests the mound was once considerably larger before being reduced over time.
At the western end of the cairn sits a cist, the type of small stone-lined box grave common in Bronze Age Ireland, typically used for individual burials and often covered by a single capstone. Here the cist is formed by four upright slabs enclosing a roughly square space, with a hawthorn growing from its centre now, roots threading down through whatever archaeology remains. Writing in 1934, a researcher named Bowman recorded that the mound had already been levelled by that point, and that traces of a circular enclosure or fence around it could still be made out. He also noted a covering stone lying nearby, measuring approximately three feet by two feet ten inches, though a flat slab visible at the eastern end of the cairn, considerably smaller than Bowman's dimensions suggest, may or may not be the same piece. The discrepancy is unresolved. The cist itself, once sealed and interred, now stands open to the sky, its four uprights still in place around the hawthorn that has taken hold at its heart.