Megalithic tomb, Carrownakib, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb, Carrownakib, Co. Galway

On a south-facing slope in the gentle pasture of north County Galway, a prehistoric tomb has been quietly absorbed into the working fabric of a farm.

What survives is a megalithic gallery, roughly 2.2 metres long and 1.75 metres wide, oriented east to west, with two orthostats remaining on its north side, a single stone on the south, and a tall backstone at the western end standing about 1.8 metres high. The chamber itself is filled with field stones, and a large displaced stone juts out from among them. An upright at the eastern end appears to have been shifted from its original position at some point, possibly when the remains were incorporated into a field boundary wall running beside an outhouse. The tomb is not a ruin kept at a respectful distance; it is genuinely part of the wall.

The site was recorded by Aldridge in 1965, and the details are spare enough to leave the monument's precise type open to some interpretation. It is generally classified as a megalithic tomb, a broad category covering the various stone-built burial structures raised by Neolithic communities in Ireland from around 4000 BC onward. What lends particular interest to this quiet hillside is its proximity to a court tomb standing roughly 130 metres to the south-east. Court tombs, characterised by a roofless forecourt that likely served a ceremonial function in front of the burial gallery, are among the earliest megalithic forms in Ireland, and their clustering in north Connacht is well documented. The presence of two monuments within such a short distance of each other suggests this low hill in Carrownakib once held some significance in the Neolithic landscape of the region, even if the field walls and outhouse now tell a very different story about its more recent use.

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