Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Barnalyra, Co. Mayo

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – wedge tomb, Barnalyra, Co. Mayo

On a low rise in the pastureland of Barnalyra in County Mayo, a prehistoric monument sits half-swallowed by hawthorn and brambles, its stones still holding their positions after several thousand years.

This is a wedge tomb, a type of megalithic burial monument built in Ireland broadly during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, typically consisting of a long, box-like stone gallery that narrows towards one end. The name refers to the wedge-shaped plan rather than anything decorative, and the form is found widely across the west of Ireland, where this example quietly persists.

The gallery here is oriented roughly east to west, defined by nine close-set upright stones, or orthostats, four forming the northern side and five the southern. A large stone closes each end of the gallery, east and west. A further upright stone, aligned north to south, stands a few metres to the south of the western end, its precise original function uncertain. The whole structure sits within a stony cairn, roughly fourteen metres along its northeast to southwest axis and about eight metres across, now largely obscured by vegetation. A field wall runs along the western side of the cairn, a detail that speaks to centuries of agricultural life pressing up against, and quietly accommodating, a much older presence in the landscape. About twenty-five metres to the east, at the base of the slope, stands a derelict farmstead, a later layer of human habitation in the same small patch of ground.

The site is in pasture, so the approach will depend on land access, and the cairn itself is heavily overgrown. Visitors who do reach it should look carefully through the brambles for the orthostats and the end-stones, and for the solitary upright set apart to the south, which is easy to miss.

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Pete F
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