Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Cabragh, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Megalithic Tombs
A layer of peat has crept over parts of this ancient tomb on the rocky reclaimed pasture below the Ox Mountains, as if the land itself has been slowly trying to reclaim it.
The structure faces west-northwest across an extensive southward view, and its orientation and preservation together make it one of the more quietly remarkable megalithic monuments in County Sligo. Wedge tombs, the most numerous class of megalithic tomb in Ireland, are so called because their galleries taper in both height and width from front to back; they were built during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, broadly between 2500 and 2000 BC, and were used for communal burial.
The gallery here is divided by two jamb-like stones set into the walls and a septal stone, a flat slab used to partition the interior, into a portico and a main chamber. The portico measures roughly 1.4 metres long by 1.3 metres wide, while the main chamber runs to 6 metres in length, narrowing from 1.6 metres at the front to just 0.7 metres at the rear. That tapering is the defining characteristic of the type, and here it is clearly legible in stone. Eight orthostats, the large upright slabs that form the walls, stand on the north side of the main chamber and seven on the south. Three overlapping roofstones still cover the eastern end, resting directly on the gallery sides, and a considerable quantity of cairn material survives between the outer walling and the gallery itself, though no trace of any external mound remains. A single large orthostat holds its position at the eastern end of the monument, and a facade stone on the north side links the outer wall to the front of the portico; its counterpart to the south has fallen flat. There is also a set stone of uncertain function sitting roughly 0.7 metres outside the eastern end of the outer walling on the north side, its original purpose unresolved. Seán Ó Nualláin documented the tomb as part of his survey of the megalithic tombs of County Sligo, published in 1989.