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Dermot and Granias Bed

Wedge tomb

What is recorded here

Dermot and Granias Bed is a wedge tomb on a low Galway knoll where a long stone gallery still narrows toward the east. It has suffered burial, overflow and forgetfulness, yet its chamber shape remains clear enough to imagine dead people laid beside one another in darkness. The name suggests local memory, but the stones give no answer about whom they held or when they stopped being tended.
On a low knoll near the W end of a long ridge in rolling farmland, some 3.5km to the SE of Craughwell. Described by de Valera and Ó Nualláin 1(972, 16-17) as the remains of a long gallery (L > 9m; Wth 1.9m at W narrowing to 0.9m near E end), aligned ENE-WSW, flanked along either side by outer-walling. A high septal-stone at W separated a short portico (L 1.6m) from the remainder of the gallery (L c. 7m). A single displaced roofstone lay across the middle of the gallery. The structure is incorporated in an irregularly shaped mound. On re-inspection in December 2007 the monument was heavily overgrown and field-clearance material had been dumped around its perimeter. (McCaffrey 1952, 14) See linked document with details from Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland. Volume III. Counties Galway, Roscommon, Leitrim, Longford, Westmeath, Laoighis, Offaly, Kildare, Cavan. (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1972). Compiled by: Galway Archaeological Survey, UCG Date of upload: 19 August 2019
Neolithic long gallery tomb; dates to the earlier part of the Neolithic period in Ireland (c. 4000–3000 BCE). Its orientation and dimensions suggest it is part of a broader tradition of megalithic funerary architecture in the region.

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What survives
Recorded monument

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