What is recorded here

Mary Skerretts Mount stood on a Galway esker until quarrying erased it, preserving two cremated adults and a knife inside a small earthen mound. Its shallow fosse and central hollow suggest deliberate care rather than casual dumping. The loss is understandable only because the mound marked a particular dead person, not merely a pile of soil.

On an esker in undulating grassland. Excavated in 1937 (Willmot 1939, 121-4), it consisted of a small earthen mound (D c. 16m, H 2.2m) built on a low natural knoll. It was encircled by a shallow fosse. The excavation revealed a small central 'hollow' (D 0.3m) containing the cremated remains of an adult and some animal bones. Some 0.6m to S was a short cist (WNW-ESE; L 0.65m, Wth 0.3m, H 0.55m) containing the cremated bones of an adult and a plano-convex knife. The monument was subsequently destroyed by quarrying. See also GA043-094----. (Waddell 1990, 90-92) The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Galway Vol. II - North Galway'. Compiled by Olive Alcock, Kathy de hÓra and Paul Gosling (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1999). Date of upload: 05 August 2010

A Neolithic passage tomb, dating to the 4th millennium BCE. Its location on an esker and construction with an encircling fosse highlight its significance as an early ceremonial and funerary site in the Irish Neolithic landscape.

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