Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Ardrah, Co. Cork

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – wedge tomb, Ardrah, Co. Cork

A drain dug along a townland boundary some decades ago did more damage to this prehistoric tomb than several millennia of boggy upland weather.

The wedge tomb on the south-west-facing slopes of the Maughanaclea Hills sits in a hollow between two natural rises, incorporated into the boundary line separating the townlands of Ardrah and Gortnacowley. That bureaucratic accident of geography proved costly: when the drain was cut along the boundary, the stones forming the north side of the tomb's gallery were thrown out of position, leaving the structure substantially dismembered.

Wedge tombs are the most numerous megalithic tomb type in Ireland, built broadly during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, typically consisting of a roofed gallery that tapers or narrows towards the back and often faces south-west. This one retains a gallery roughly 2.8 metres long, oriented ENE to WSW. Two overlapping upright slabs, still standing about 1.2 metres high and leaning slightly southward, represent the south wall of the gallery, and together with the backstone they appear to be the only elements still in anything close to their original positions. The north side is another matter: two flat slabs lying prostrate in the gallery area west of the backstone are probably the remnants of that displaced wall. A large flat slab measuring 2.1 metres by 1.5 metres lies about a metre to the south-east and is likely the roofstone, shifted from its original position. Near the south-west corner of the gallery, two further stones lean at angles and may represent displaced façade stones, the entrance elements that would originally have framed the tomb's mouth. A further slab, 2.1 metres long, was found lying in the bottom of the drain itself, four metres west of the tomb, almost certainly dragged there from the structure during the drainage work. A cairn sits approximately 190 metres to the south-west, hinting that this stretch of upland was a place of some significance to the people who built here.

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