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CLOGHANMORE County Donegal

Cloghanmore is the largest and one of the most interesting of the many megaliths scattered across this rugged coastal district, 21/2 miles south-west of Glencolumbkille. The remains are of a fairly well-preserved full-court tomb sited in marshy ground close to a stream in Malin More glen. The oval-shaped court, about 45 feet long, combines orthostats and dry-walling, and leads to a pair of twin-chambered galleries built side by side at its western end, an arrangement found at only one other site: the magnificent fullcourt tomb at Magheraghanrush in Co. Sligo. Two small subsidiary chambers opening onto the east end of the court have faint traces of decoration on the entrance jambs, characteristic of passage tombs, but here unique in a court tomb context. The long tapered cairn, with its revetment of dry-walling was restored in a perfunctory tidying-up project in the nineteenth century and may not accurately represent its original shape.

About1/2 mile west of Cloghanmore is a remarkable sequence of six dolmens set in line, apparently all at one time contained in the same cairn, which would have measured about 300 feet in overall length. Here and elsewhere in the district, some of the more commodious chambers have been appropriated by canny farmers for use as animal shelters. In 1871, a visitor to the imposing but mutilated megalithic tomb at Farranmacbride reported: ‘On getting into another cavity, I found two black lambs inside, and in another some pigs, in another calves’.

Click here to buy the Appletree Press book from Amazon.co.uk. For more information click on: Ireland's Ancient Stones - A Megalithic Heritage by Kenneth McNally, published by Appletree Press.

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