Megalithic tomb - court tomb, Aghagashlan, Co. Cavan

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – court tomb, Aghagashlan, Co. Cavan

What makes the court tomb at Aghagashlan quietly unusual is its doubled architecture.

Most court tombs, the Neolithic monument type found widely across the north and west of Ireland, feature a single forecourt, an unroofed ceremonial space opening onto a burial gallery. This one has two. Facing inward from opposite ends of the same oval cairn, the two courts served two galleries, each running lengthwise into the mound, their entrances marked by upright jamb-stones set longitudinally to frame the passage in.

The structure sits on a low ridge in County Cavan, incorporated into an oval mound aligned roughly east to west, measuring 23 metres long, 17.5 metres wide, and still standing around 1.5 metres high. The western end is the better preserved: two facade-stones survive there, articulating with the southern arm of a semicircular court. At the eastern end, the court appears to have been more elongated in design. Of the eastern gallery, two sidestones on the south and a backstone remain, giving a length of around 5 metres. The western gallery, represented now by a single sidestone, was at least as long. Based on those dimensions, archaeologists Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, who documented the site in their 1972 survey of megalithic tombs across Ireland, concluded that each gallery likely comprised two chambers. Whether the two galleries originally shared a common backstone where they met in the middle of the cairn remains unresolved.

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