What is recorded here

Dermot and Grania's Bed is a ruined wedge tomb on a Clare pasture slope where two large broken stones still lie flat like a forgotten sleeping platform. The name suggests a lover or a hero, but the stones give no answer, only a wide shallow chamber that once stood a little over a metre high before collapsing into the earth. What remains is a trapezoidal scar of rubble and grass, holding the shape of a place people believed worthy of naming.

Near the top of a gentle SE-facing slope in pasture and within a large multiperiod field system (CL008-109001-). Indicated and labelled 'Dermot & Grania's Bed' on the 1842 and 1920 eds. of the OS 6-inch map. Listed as 'Megalithic structure site' in the RMP (1996). The OS Name Book (1840) referred to the monument as a 'stone altar' (de Valera and Ó Nualláin 1961, 91). According to Borlase (1897, vol. 1, 80) and Westropp (1905, 355), this wedge tomb collapsed in the late 19th century. Both antiquarians described the remains as oriented E-W and embedded or partly embedded in a cairn (already removed). The N and S sidestones (L 3.05m) lay flat, side by side, and each was broken in the centre (Borlase 1897, vol. 1, 80). The original standing height of the tomb chamber was estimated as 1.22m (ibid.). The roof-slab (L 3.05m; Wth 2.49m at W, narrowing to 1.83m at E; T 0.18-0.23m) overlay the N sidestone (Westropp 1905, 355). Under these large prone slabs were found two smaller slabs which were thought to be endstones; because the W endstone (L 1.52m) was longer than that at the E (L 1.22m), Westropp (ibid.) concluded that 'there was the usual eastward taper' (in height and/or width). De Valera and Ó Nualláin (1961, 91) found no trace of this monument in 1952. During a field inspection in 1998, a trapezoidal area (9m NW-SE; 7m NE-SW at NW side; 5m NE-SW at SE side) that may mark its site was identified; its SW side was defined by a field wall and its other sides consisted of collapsed and grass-covered banks (Wth 1.25m; H 0.2m). The interior was piled with heavily overgrown field-clearance rubble. See linked document with details from Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland. Volume I. County Clare. (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1961) The following image has been uploaded: CL008-022----_01.jpg View from ESE Compiled by: Olive Alcock and Conn Herriott Date of upload: 5 September 2022

Portal dolmen; likely dates to the Early Bronze Age. Its long-standing local identification and appearance on early Ordnance Survey maps highlight its cultural and historical significance in the landscape.

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