Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Doire Na Sagart, Co. Cork

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – wedge tomb, Doire Na Sagart, Co. Cork

On the upper south-westerly slopes of Knockacommeen, a massive stone measuring roughly 2.2 metres by 2 metres lies displaced and largely buried beneath forestry debris, a probable roofstone from a megalithic chamber that stood for several thousand years before collapsing in the late 1960s.

The tomb was not excavated or formally recorded before it fell; it was simply uncovered by accident, then lost again.

The circumstances of its discovery are themselves telling. When peat was being cut in the area during the 1960s, workers exposed what appeared to be a wedge tomb, the type of megalithic burial structure, typically dating to the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, in which a long, tapering stone gallery was built using large upright slabs capped by one or more roofstones. The chamber at Doire Na Sagart, the name translates roughly as the wood of the priest, appeared to consist of exactly this arrangement. At some point in the late 1960s the sidestones shifted inwards and the structure collapsed. By the time conifers were planted across the hillside in the 1970s, the site was already a ruin among ruins. The forest has since deepened the obscurity; a series of large displaced stones remain visible, but they are largely concealed beneath fallen timber and clearance waste. What makes the identification more plausible, if still provisional, is the company the site keeps: two other confirmed wedge tombs stand on the same mountain, one approximately 500 metres to the north-east and another around 1.1 kilometres in the same direction. A cluster of three such monuments on a single upland would be consistent with patterns seen elsewhere in Munster, where wedge tombs were often sited on exposed hill slopes and seem, in places, to have accumulated over generations.

The site sits within dense coniferous plantation, and the combination of forest debris and fallen brash makes the stones difficult to locate or examine clearly. The possible roofstone is the most substantial visible element, but even that is partly buried. Anyone visiting would be navigating working or cleared forestry terrain on Knockacommeen, which demands appropriate footwear and some tolerance for uncertain ground.

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