Croaghbeg : Court Tomb

CountyDonegal
Grid RefG 646 752
Longitude8° 32' 53.21" W
Latitude54° 37' 25.27" N
ITM east480366
ITM north584435
Nearest TownCarrick (6.5 Km)
OS Sheet10
UTM zone29U
UTM x449041
UTM y5761192
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Visit Notes

Thursday, 1st January 2004

When visiting Shalwy (County Donegal) you have to visit this one too. The two are intervisible and a short, but soggy walk apart. Croagh beg is not as impressive as Shalwy, but it's still nice.

Croaghbeg lacks the fine pointed lintel of Shalwy, but does have a nice chunky square sectioned one, which makes it look very solid indeed. The corbelling in the gallery is very impressive in its sizes.

The court is very vague and the archeaologists couldn't properly identify it during excavation due to disturbance. As it stands now the court is mainly formed by drystone walling.

In front of the main tomb is a (now) freestanding subsidiary chamber which really does look like a portal tomb without a capstone , confirming the links between these two types of monument.

Like Shalwy, this monument faces north, away from the sea and towards the valley head, so visits are probably best either late or early on a summer's day.

Portal tombs are what most people wrongly refer to as dolmens. They are, to me at least, the most strikingly designed of the megalithic tombs. They are called portal tombs because they have two large upright stones, usually very well matched, in front of the chamber that seem to form a doorway.

Resting upon the portal stones and the chamber a large capstone rests (sometimes there are two capstones - see Knockeen (County Waterford)), usually at an angle of around 22 degrees from the horizontal. Although these were originally incorporated into one end of a long cairn there are none left in this state today, although traces of the cairn can sometimes be seen upon the ground. The portal stones can be up to 3.5m tall, which combined with a thick capstone can produce an imposing monument over 5m tall. Capstones can reach in excess of 70 tonnes, with that of Browne's Hill (County Carlow) being estimated at over 120 tonnes.


Often betwen the portal stones there is a door slab, blocking the width of the entrance, but not always the full height. Door slabs are either half height, three quarter height or full height, describing the amount of the portal that they obstruct. All portal tombs would have had door slab, but this has often been removed to facilitate entry into the chamber.

Quite rarely the portal stones are the same height as the chamber and the characteristic slope of the capstone is created by the profile of the capstone (see Glendruid (County Dublin)).

The large rock used to form the roof of a portal tomb or kist.

Like this monument

Marked Sites

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A Selection of Other Court Tombs

About Coordinates Displayed

This is an explanation of (and a bit of a disclaimer for) the coordinates I provide.

Where a GPS figure is given this is the master for all other coordinates. According to my Garmin these are quite accurate.

Where there is no GPS figure the 6 figure grid reference is master for the others. This may not be very accurate as it could have come from the OS maps and could have been read by eye. Consequently, all other cordinates are going to have inaccuracies.

The calculation of Longitude and Latitude uses an algorithm that is not 100% accurate. The long/lat figures are used as a basis for calculating the UTM & ITM coordinates. Consequently, UTM & ITM coordinates are slightly out.

UTM is a global coordinate system - Universal Transverse Mercator - that is at the core of the GPS system.

ITM is the new coordinate system - Irish Transverse Mercator - that is more accurate and more GPS friendly than the Irish Grid Reference system. This will be used on the next generation of Irish OS maps.

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