What is recorded here

Four massive boulders rest on hidden stone levers inside a wider circle, blocking human entry but inviting curious minds to imagine the dead within. The arrangement suggests deliberate exclusion, as if the living were meant to witness the chamber rather than occupy it.

In pasture, on a platform on a NW-facing slope on the S side of the Owvane River valley. Within a multiple-stone circle (CO106-00501-) is a regular group of four boulder-burials, set close together, two on each side of the main axis of the circle, and slightly closer to the axial stone than to the entrance of the circle (Ó Nualláin 1978, 88, see plan in ibid., 111). Three support stones (L 0.3m to 0.55m; H 0.15m) are visible beneath the N boulder-burial cover-stone, (L 1.5m; Wth 1.35m; T 0.5m). Two support stones (L 0.4m; H 0.15 and 0.20m) are visible beneath at each end of the S cover-stone (L 1.7m; Wth 1.2m; T 0.9m), and two also (L 0.4m; H 0.15 and 0.20m) are visible beneath the W boulder-burial cover stone (L 1.80m; Wth 1m; T 0.8m), at its southern end. No support stones are visible beneath the E boulder (L 1.3m; Wth; 0.8m; T 0.7m). (Ibid., no. 13). This is a National Monument in State Ownership (no. 450). The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 1: West Cork' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1992). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload/revision: 14 January 2009

Portal dolmen; Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age. The site represents a rare survival of a multiple-burial megalithic monument, indicating complex funerary practices and social organization in the region.

The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.