Boulder-burial, Lehid, Co. Kerry

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Burial Sites

Boulder-burial, Lehid, Co. Kerry

In rough pasture beside a road north-east of Gowlane Lake in south-west Kerry, a small boulder sits propped on two support-stones, tilting gently to the south-east where one edge meets the ground.

This is a boulder-burial, a Bronze Age monument type found almost exclusively in south-west Ireland, in which a large natural stone is raised on low supports and placed over or near human remains. They are distinct from the more familiar portal tombs or wedge tombs, being simpler and less architecturally dramatic, which may be part of why they receive less attention. This particular example measures roughly one metre by just under a metre, and the slight displacement of the boulder suggests it may have shifted from its original position over the intervening millennia.

What makes the spot especially striking is the concentration of prehistoric features gathered in a small area of otherwise unremarkable farmland. Another boulder-burial stands just one metre to the west, meaning two of these relatively uncommon monuments sit almost side by side. A standing stone rises approximately thirty metres to the north-west. A few metres to the east, a line of upright stones between thirty-five and eighty-five centimetres high marks the course of an ancient field boundary. Together, the grouping suggests a landscape that was meaningful and organised in the Bronze Age, even if the precise relationships between the monuments are no longer legible. Boulder-burials in Kerry tend to cluster in the peninsulas of the south-west, and Lehid sits within a part of the county that has long been recognised as unusually dense with prehistoric remains.

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