Megalithic structure, Bauraglanna, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic structure, Bauraglanna, Co. Tipperary

Some ancient sites are remarkable for what survives.

This one is remarkable for what does not. On the eastern side of a field-bank at the foot of a south-facing slope, just north of the Mulkear River in County Tipperary, there is nothing recognisable to see, yet the spot carries a formal designation as a megalithic structure, preserved in records precisely because what was once there cannot quite be forgotten, or fully explained.

The trail of evidence is thin and contradictory, which is part of what makes it interesting. An Ordnance Survey Name Book entry from around 1840 describes the feature as a heap of stones covering roughly a square perch of ground, an old unit of measurement equivalent to perhaps five square metres. By the time a later Name Book was compiled in 1904, the account had shifted considerably: the feature was now described as a single horizontally laid stone, which suggests either that significant change had occurred in the intervening decades or that different observers were looking at different things. In 1910, a researcher named Crawford recorded something slightly different again, noting a large stone buried within the field-bank, with a projecting corner resting on a smaller stone beneath it. Whether these three descriptions refer to the same object in various states of disturbance, or reflect genuine confusion about the site from the outset, remains unresolved. De Valera and Ó Nualláin, whose 1982 survey of megalithic monuments remains a standard reference, catalogued it cautiously, acknowledging that the nature of the feature is simply uncertain.

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