Cist, Gortnaskehy, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Burial Sites

Cist, Gortnaskehy, Co. Tipperary

On the flat summit of Moher Hill in north Tipperary, a barely-there ring of stones and a low earthen scarp are all that survive above ground of what was once a circular burial cairn.

What makes this site quietly arresting is not what you can see but what was recently uncovered beneath it: a small stone-built grave, or cist, the kind of box-like burial chamber constructed from carefully arranged slabs that prehistoric communities across Ireland used to inter their dead. This one had been sealed for an unknown length of time before soil was stripped from its base, disturbing what lay inside.

The cist itself is compact, measuring roughly 82 centimetres in length and no more than 76 centimetres wide, trapezoidal in plan with the broader end pointing to the south-west. Four flat sandstone slabs set on edge form its walls, and a substantial rectangular capstone, over two metres long and nearly a metre wide, sits above them. That capstone is sandstone flecked with quartz pebble inclusions, which would have given it a faintly speckled appearance when freshly exposed. The cairn that once covered the whole structure measured just over ten metres across, and while it is now much reduced, its circular outline can still be traced. When the base of the cist was recently disturbed, about 20 centimetres of soil had been removed and the flag floor paving the bottom broken through. Local accounts noted that the soil at that level had been unusually dry, suggesting the chamber had remained largely sealed. A small quantity of charcoal found in the disturbed material hints at some funerary activity, though its precise significance is unclear without further investigation.

The hill commands wide views across a broad valley to the south-west, with panoramic sightlines running from east through south to west. That positioning was almost certainly deliberate; prehistoric cairns of this kind are frequently placed on elevated ground where they would have been visible across the surrounding landscape, marking the dead in relation to the living world below.

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