Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Iskancullin, Co. Clare

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – wedge tomb, Iskancullin, Co. Clare

On a south-facing slope in Iskancullin, County Clare, a wedge tomb sits among rough pasture and exposed limestone pavement, its chamber open to the sky and its original capstone broken into fragments that now lie scattered around and inside the structure.

Wedge tombs are a type of megalithic burial monument, typically dating to the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, characterised by a chamber that is wider and taller at the western end and tapers toward the east. This one follows that pattern precisely: roughly 2.6 metres long, 1.4 metres wide at the west and narrowing to 1.2 metres at the east, with the height dropping from 1.2 metres to 0.75 metres along its length. What makes it quietly arresting is the completeness of its skeletal remains. The two long sidestones, each a single limestone slab with hammer-dressed upper edges, still stand in position. A broken slab near the western end of the northern sidestone may once have served as a sill or doorstone. A little further to the northeast, a small upright slab hints at either a continuation of the chamber or a separate end-chamber, though its exact purpose remains uncertain.

The tomb was documented in detail by Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin in their 1961 Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, the first volume of which covered County Clare. Their account describes not just the inner chamber but an elaborate system of outer walling surrounding it on all sides. On the northern side alone, eight near-contiguous limestone slabs, set between half a metre and one metre outside the chamber wall, stretched across roughly 7.5 metres. On the southern side, a gap of about three metres separated the eastern and western sections of the outer walling, with a flat-lying slab in between. The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp had visited the site in 1901, and by comparing his observations with the later survey, it became clear that at least one of the southern walling stones had fallen in the intervening decades. A further inspection in May 1997 found the monument otherwise unchanged. The tomb sits within a large multiperiod field system, and roughly 76 metres to the northwest lies a cashel, a type of stone-walled enclosure associated with early medieval settlement, suggesting the area was in active use across several distinct periods.

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