Slab-lined burial, Belladooan, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Burial Sites

Slab-lined burial, Belladooan, Co. Mayo

On the summit of an esker near Belladooan in County Mayo, quarry workers in the 1930s broke open a gravel ridge and found, just beneath the surface, a series of carefully constructed stone-lined graves.

An esker is a long, sinuous ridge of gravel and sand deposited by a meltwater stream running beneath a glacier at the end of the last Ice Age; they are distinctive features of the Irish midland landscape and, because they offered dry, elevated ground, were sometimes chosen as burial sites in early historic times. Three graves were discovered here in total, two of them in 1931 and a third in 1938, all clustered within a few metres of one another at the north-western end of the ridge.

The 1938 grave was the most precisely documented of the three. Rectangular in plan and measuring roughly 1.85 metres long by 0.45 metres wide, it was built with economy and care: a single large slab along its northern long side, two slabs along the south, and one slab sealing each of the short ends. Seven smaller, overlapping slabs formed a roof over the whole structure. Inside, at a depth of only about 30 centimetres below the surface, lay an extended skeleton with the head positioned to the west, a orientation associated with early Christian burial practice. The bones were poorly preserved. Radiocarbon dating of bone from one of the 1931 graves returned a date suggesting the late Iron Age or Early Medieval period, somewhere broadly within the range of the fourth to seventh centuries AD, which places these graves at or near the transition between pre-Christian and Christian Ireland. The finds were noted by Morris in 1932 and later recorded in the National Museum of Ireland's topographical files, but no physical trace of the graves themselves now survives. Where the burials once lay, there are only old quarry pits several metres across and roughly two metres deep, long since swallowed by overgrowth.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Slab-lined burial, Belladooan, Co. Mayo. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement