Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Doire Na Sagart, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Megalithic Tombs
High on a south-facing slope of Knockacommeen in the Derrynasaggart Mountains, a prehistoric tomb sits partly exposed in cut-away bog, its stones tilted and scattered but still legible as a structure that someone, several thousand years ago, went to considerable effort to build in a remote and elevated place.
What makes the situation quietly striking is that the monument was, until relatively recently, entirely swallowed by peat. The bog preserved it and then, as the surrounding ground was cut away for fuel, gave it back.
The tomb belongs to the wedge tomb tradition, a class of megalithic monument found predominantly in the west and south of Ireland and generally dated to the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, roughly 2500 to 2000 BC. Wedge tombs take their name from their characteristic profile: the gallery is typically wider and higher at the western or south-western end and tapers toward the east. That pattern holds here. The ruined gallery measures about 2.8 metres long and roughly a metre wide, aligned on a NE-SW axis. Large sidestones run along the north and south of the chamber, overlapped at the western end by two lower slabs. An inset backstone closes the eastern end, and a sill-like stone marks the western entrance. A single buttress-stone sits outside the gallery to the south, possibly bracing one of the larger uprights. Two further upright slabs flanking the western end may represent the remains of an outer wall, a feature found on other wedge tombs where a second skin of stonework enclosed the main chamber. The displaced roofstone now lies at the south-eastern end of the gallery, presumably slipped or toppled at some point after the enclosing peat began to recede. Séan Ó Nualláin documented the monument in 1989 as part of his systematic survey of Irish wedge tombs.