Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Kealanine By.), Co. Cork
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Megalithic Tombs
On a north-facing shoulder of a rocky ridge in Kealanine, County Cork, a small megalithic structure sits quietly absorbed into the working landscape around it.
Its western end has been drawn into a field fence at some point, the ancient stonework pressed into service as a boundary marker, which is the kind of quiet indignity these monuments sometimes suffer and somehow survive.
The tomb is a wedge tomb, a type of megalithic monument built during the later Neolithic and into the Bronze Age, typically characterised by a gallery that narrows and lowers from one end to the other. This one follows that pattern faithfully. Aligned east to west, it measures 3.7 metres in length, with a width of 1.1 metres at its broader eastern end. Three upright stones form each of the north and south sides, and the slabs decrease in height as they move westward, giving the structure its distinctive wedge profile. A backstone closes the eastern end, and two roof stones still cover the gallery. There is no surviving evidence of an enclosing mound, which may have eroded away or may never have been substantial here. Seán Ó Nualláin, whose 1989 survey of Irish wedge tombs remains a foundational reference, recorded this monument and included it among the considerable concentration of such structures found across Cork and Kerry.