Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Belrose, Co. Cork

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – wedge tomb, Belrose, Co. Cork

Three stones in a line, a displaced roofstone propped against the western pair, and a single upright standing at an odd angle to one end: what survives at Belrose in County Cork is not much to look at, but it is enough for archaeologists to identify it as a wedge tomb, one of the most numerous megalithic tomb types in Ireland.

Wedge tombs, so called because their gallery is typically wider and higher at the front than at the rear, were built during the late Neolithic and into the Bronze Age, and are found in concentrations across the west and south of the country. The Belrose example sits on the floor of a broad, shallow valley, at the foot of an outcropping rock ridge, a setting that feels less dramatic than many of its counterparts but is entirely characteristic of how these monuments were quietly inserted into the landscape.

The three surviving stones, measuring roughly 2.6 metres in length when taken together, are thought to represent one side, possibly the northern wall, of what was once a roofed gallery. The alignment runs roughly northwest to southwest. The displaced roofstone now leans against the western pair of orthostats rather than lying flat above them, suggesting the structure has been disturbed, whether by time, weather, or human interference, at some point in the intervening millennia. A single upright stone positioned at a right angle to the southern side of the western end may be a remnant of a frontal facade, the more architecturally elaborate entrance feature that distinguished the front of a wedge tomb from its narrower rear. There is no trace of the earthen or stone mound that would originally have covered the gallery, as recorded by Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin in their survey of megalithic tombs across Counties Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Tipperary, published in 1982. What remains is skeletal, a structural outline rather than anything approaching an intact monument.

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