Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Corbehagh, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Megalithic Tombs
In the townland of Corbehagh, in County Clare, a wedge tomb sits in the landscape with little fanfare and, at present, little documentation available to the curious.
Wedge tombs are the most numerous of Ireland's megalithic tomb types, built roughly between 2500 and 2000 BC during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. Their name comes from their distinctive shape: a roofed gallery that narrows and lowers from front to back, typically orientated towards the west or south-west. They are found in considerable concentrations across the west of Ireland, and Clare in particular has a notable cluster of them, many positioned on elevated ground or near the edges of the Burren's limestone expanses.
Beyond its classification and location, the specific history of the Corbehagh example remains, for now, thinly recorded in the public domain. What can be said is that it belongs to a tradition of communal burial and monument-building that preceded written history in Ireland by several thousand years, raised by farming communities who reshaped the land with considerable effort and intention. The fact that it survives at all in a county where agriculture, land clearance, and centuries of stone robbing have erased so many similar structures is itself worth pausing over.