Megalithic tomb - passage tomb, Deerpark (Coshlea By.), Co. Limerick

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – passage tomb, Deerpark (Coshlea By.), Co. Limerick

A passage tomb is, at its simplest, a long narrow corridor of upright stones leading into one or more burial chambers, all buried beneath a mound of earth and rubble.

The one in Deerpark townland in the Coshlea barony of County Limerick takes that basic plan and elaborates it into something more architecturally considered: a cruciform layout, with two side chambers branching off at right angles, a roofed end chamber, and a cairn that once measured roughly 25 metres across. What makes it quietly remarkable is the engineering still visible in the end chamber, where three roofstones are stacked in a deliberate sequence, the weight of each helping to hold the others in position. The passage itself narrows considerably after the entrance, dropping from 1.3 metres in width to as little as 0.4 metres along much of its length, which suggests the original builders were not designing for casual movement but for something more deliberate.

The tomb was recorded in detail by Ó Nualláin and Cody in 1987, though it had attracted scholarly attention considerably earlier; Borlase noted it in 1897, and P. J. Lynch published observations between 1901 and 1920. The cairn, though ruined and largely grass-grown, retains a round form, and the entrance to the passage faces north. The western transeptal chamber, one of the two side chambers, is well preserved and still roofed by a single capstone. The eastern transept has fared less well, with its northern side missing and only three stones surviving. In 1952, the folklorist and scholar Dr. Caoimhín Ó Danachair wrote to the relevant authorities about a separate feature he had spotted approximately 30 yards from the tomb, a stone circle roughly six yards in diameter that had been exposed by a bog fire earlier that spring. By August 1953 heather and moss had already begun to reclaim it, and when a formal search was carried out in 1984, the plantation of closely grown trees covering the area made it impossible to locate. It has not been confirmed since.

The monument is a protected national monument, subject to a preservation order dating to 1932 under what is now the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014. Tree planting has encroached to within a couple of metres of the cairn perimeter, and the machinery used for that work has disturbed the edges of the site. The ground inside and around the cairn is uneven and stony underfoot, so solid footwear is advisable. Ballylanders village, whose old church tower Ó Danachair used as a directional reference point in his correspondence, lies about 4.5 kilometres to the south-south-west and provides a useful orientation landmark when approaching the area.

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