What is recorded here

Giants Grave is a ruined wedge tomb on Church Hill, Cavan, where a tall western stone still splits the entry to a six-metre gallery. It has been moved once already to escape quarrying, and it may move again when the land is wanted for something sharper. The dead were placed beneath a rough paving, some burned and some whole, as if both fates belonged in the same house. A grave named for giants may be a warning about human size, since even the largest living thing must one day be carried somewhere else.

Originally sited on Church Hill at the SE flank of Slieve Rushen, this tomb was excavated in 1992 in advance of quarrying operations and re-erected in the grounds of the Slieve Russell Hotel near Ballyconnell (see CV014-060----). It consists of a ruined gallery, some 6m long, aligned WSW-ENE, set in a low, round cairn, retained by a kerb. A tall stone at W, splits the entry to the gallery which seems to have been divided into a short portico and main chamber. There are buttress stones along both sides of the gallery. During the excavation both inhumed and cremated bone, in association with beaker and food-vessel pottery, were recovered from below the cairn and inside the gallery under a rough paving. Three cist burials were found at the inner edge of the kerb. (de Valera and Ó Nualláin 1972, 115-6, No. 14; Channing 1992, 4) The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Cavan' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1995). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload/revision: 24 August 2010 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). This monument is subject to a preservation order made under the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014 (PO no. 2/1987).

Portal dolmen; likely dates to the Neolithic period (c. 4000–2500 BCE). Its relocation highlights efforts to preserve significant prehistoric monuments threatened by development.

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