Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Largan Beg, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Megalithic Tombs
In the townland of Largan Beg in County Mayo, a wedge tomb survives from the Neolithic or early Bronze Age, its stones arranged in the characteristic tapered plan that gives this tomb type its name.
Wedge tombs are the most numerous of Ireland's megalithic tomb types, with several hundred recorded across the country, and they are particularly concentrated in the west. The typical form is a roofed gallery, wider and higher at the entrance end and narrowing toward the rear, often enclosed within a low cairn of smaller stones. They were collective burial monuments, used over generations, and their builders oriented them with some consistency toward the setting sun in the west or south-west.
Largan Beg itself is a small rural townland, and the presence of a megalithic structure there places it within a broader pattern of prehistoric activity across the Mayo landscape, where such monuments are relatively common on upland ground that was more accessible to early farming communities than the boggy lowlands. The specific details of this particular tomb, its current condition, the number of surviving stones, whether any cairn material remains, are not presently documented in available public records.
Given the scarcity of detail on record, a visit would require some local knowledge or preliminary research to locate the tomb precisely within the townland.