Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Creeveen, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Megalithic Tombs
On the south-east-facing slopes of Knockastumpa in County Kerry, a prehistoric monument is slowly being swallowed by the bog.
The roofstone, a slab measuring roughly 2.4 metres by 1.4 metres and only about 10 centimetres thick, now lies flat on the ground to the south of where it once sat. This is not how it was meant to be found.
The structure is a wedge tomb, a type of megalithic burial monument built during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, generally characterised by a gallery that narrows or lowers toward one end and is typically oriented with its wider, taller opening facing west or south-west. The Creeveen example sits in rough hill pasture and survives in a fragmentary but legible state. Two sidestones at the northern edge define a chamber approximately 2.8 metres long, running east to west. A backstone at the eastern end leans at an angle and is partially buried in encroaching bog. To the west, another leaning stone and several further stones, some already obscured beneath the peat, may all belong to the original structure. The bog that now threatens to conceal these remains is the same material that has preserved comparable monuments elsewhere in Ireland, though here it seems to be winning the slower argument.