Megalithic tomb - court tomb, Leamaneh, Co. Clare

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – court tomb, Leamaneh, Co. Clare

Most megalithic tombs occupy prominent ridgelines or elevated ground, placed where they could be seen for miles.

The court tomb at Leamaneh in County Clare does the opposite: it sits at the bottom of an east-west ravine, with higher ground pressing in from both north and south. Whatever drew Neolithic people to this low, enclosed spot, it was not the desire for a commanding prospect.

Court tombs, among the earliest megalithic monument types in Ireland, typically feature an open forecourt at one end leading into a roofed gallery of burial chambers. At Leamaneh, the court itself has vanished entirely, leaving only the two-chambered gallery to indicate what once stood here. The surviving structure is aligned east-west and opens to the east, set within an oval cairn, a low mound of stones roughly 11 metres long and up to 9.5 metres wide, which widens noticeably towards its western end. The two chambers are defined by upright sidestones and separated by a pair of pointed jambstones, a transverse dividing element set just half a metre apart, giving the interior a funnelling quality as each chamber narrows from east to west. A small circular accumulation of cairn material sits to the west of the chambers, possibly the remnants of a more elaborate western terminus. A later field wall cuts across the eastern edge of the cairn, and a cashel, a type of dry-stone ringfort, lies roughly 95 metres to the south-south-west, indicating that this corner of the Burren was reused and reinterpreted across thousands of years. The Leamaneh tomb is one of only five court tombs recorded in County Clare, making it a notably rare survival in a county better known for its portal dolmens and the remarkable concentrations of monuments on the Burren plateau.

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