Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Laughanstown, Co. Dublin

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – wedge tomb, Laughanstown, Co. Dublin

On a ridge above Bride's Glen in south County Dublin, a roughly oval mound of stones sits quietly in the landscape, its shape narrowing at the eastern end and curving inward in a way that archaeologists describe as heel-shaped.

It is a wedge tomb, a type of megalithic burial monument built during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, typically characterised by a gallery that is wider and taller at the western end and tapers eastward. This one measures fourteen metres in length and twelve metres across at its widest point, rising to just over a metre in height. Kerbstones, the upright or flat stones that originally defined the edge of the cairn, remain visible along both the northern and southern sides, and there are traces of what appears to have been a straight façade at the western end.

The tomb was recorded in detail by Fanning in 1974, who noted the east-west orientation and the distinctive heel-shaped profile created by the way the cairn curves inward toward the east. Wedge tombs are the most numerous of Ireland's megalithic tomb types, numbering in the hundreds nationally, but examples in County Dublin are considerably rarer, which makes this ridge-top survivor worth attention. Excavations carried out close to the site in 2000 by Seaver and Keeley uncovered a finely polished, broken stone axe with pecking on its sides, possibly made from dolerite, a hard dark igneous rock often used for prestige tools in prehistory. The axe was not found within the tomb itself, but its presence nearby adds to a picture of deliberate, repeated human activity in this area over a long period.

The tomb sits on a ridge with a southerly outlook over Bride's Glen, a shallow valley that now carries the Luas Cross City extension and associated suburban development. The contrast between the ancient monument and its surroundings is fairly stark, though the site itself retains its elevated position and some sense of its original relationship to the landscape. Access is on foot, and the ground can be uneven and overgrown depending on the season. The kerbstones and the faint heel-shape of the cairn are easiest to read from a little distance rather than standing directly on top of the mound, where the full outline is harder to perceive.

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