What is recorded here

Half-buried in a Donegal bog, a two-metre pillar stone still lies prone beside its broken upright, the last visible fragment of a coffin-shaped chamber destroyed before records reached it. The tomb may have marked a ridge where people placed the dead beneath a single broad stone, but the chamber itself has vanished into soil and forgetting. What remains is a stub of stone, wet and quiet, waiting for the shape of the lost room to be imagined around it.

Bonner (1972, 17) recorded the destruction of 'a sort of dolmen' around 50 years earlier at Ballagh. It was said to consist of a large coffin-shaped stone resting on three uprights. The location of the site may be that indicated in the heading (C. O'Rahilly, pers. comm.). A pillar-like stone, 2.2m long, 0.4m broad and 0.2m thick, lies prone on a boggy ridge beside a low upright stone that may be part of the butt of the prostrate stone. This may have been a standing stone. Bonner 1972, 17; SMR 1987, 4:13; RMP 1995, 4:13. The above description was published in the 'Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland. Volume VI, County Donegal.' Compiled by: Eamon Cody (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2002). Date of upload: 22 September 2008

Megalithic tomb in Ballagh is likely a portal dolmen, dating to the Neolithic or early Bronze Age. Its significance lies in providing evidence of megalithic funerary practices in the region, though its destruction limits further archaeological understanding.

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