Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Eanty More, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Megalithic Tombs
A wedge tomb is typically a long, tapering stone chamber, wider and taller at the west end and narrowing toward the east, built during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age as a collective burial monument.
The example at Eanty More in County Clare is, by any measure, a small one. At just 1.6 metres long and under a metre tall at its highest point, it is compact even by the standards of a monument type that was never especially grand. What makes it quietly arresting is not its size but its condition and its setting: a well-preserved structure sitting on a level crag terrace in rough pasture, embedded within a low circular cairn of loose slabs, itself embedded within what appears to be an extensive field system spanning multiple periods of use. The land slopes away to the west and rises to the north-east and south-east, and the tomb's east-west orientation follows the characteristic alignment of the type.
When Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin documented the site for their 1961 Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, they noted several details that repay attention. The southern sidestone was set directly into a gryke, one of the natural fissures that characterise the limestone pavement terrain of Clare, effectively using the landscape itself as part of the structure's foundation. The northern sidestone showed evidence of dressing along its top edge, a sign of deliberate shaping rather than simple selection of a convenient slab. The western closing stone stood almost flush with the sidestones, and a small break in its upper north corner was judged to be accidental rather than the result of deliberate interference. The capstone had fractured at some point, with one large fragment remaining in what appeared to be its original position at the western end, while two further probable fragments had shifted to lean against the sidestones at the eastern end. By the time of an inspection in 1999, nothing had changed. The Ordnance Survey's Cassini edition map of 1920 had already marked the spot, labelling it simply 'Ancient Grave', which suggests it was a known local landmark well before any formal archaeological interest was taken in it. The footings of a later stone wall extending northward from the tomb's north-west corner are a reminder that the site continued to sit within a working agricultural landscape long after its original purpose had been forgotten.