Megalithic structure, Coomdeeween, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic structure, Coomdeeween, Co. Kerry

At the head of a small valley in the Kerry uplands, wedged between Keelnagore and Knockavahaun mountains, five stones sit in various states of collapse in what was once, most likely, a megalithic tomb.

The arrangement is modest almost to the point of invisibility, the kind of thing that asks something of the eye before it gives anything back. One stone leans askew across another; a probable roof-stone has slipped from its original position and now rests crookedly on a collapsed side-stone, as though the whole structure slowly folded inward over the centuries. A fifth stone lies a little to the west and may not have been part of the original build at all. Around the northern and eastern edges, a low sod-covered mound of smaller stones hints at what may once have been a cairn, the rubble heap that would originally have enclosed and protected the chamber beneath.

Megalithic tombs of this general type, stone-built chambers intended for the dead and sometimes covered by earthen or stone mounds, were constructed across Ireland during the Neolithic and early Bronze Age periods, roughly four to six thousand years ago. The Iveragh Peninsula in south Kerry holds a considerable concentration of such monuments, many of them in similarly remote and elevated terrain. This one sits on poor upland ground, the kind of land that has changed little since the monument was built, which is part of why anything survives at all. The valley mouth opens to the west, giving a wide view across stretches of bog towards Bentee mountain, a landscape that would have looked broadly familiar to whoever placed these stones here in the first place.

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Pete F
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