What is recorded here

Dermot and Grania's Bed, a narrow chamber of standing slabs in County Donegal, may have held more than one body before people destroyed the others. Thomas Fagan measured the last surviving grave in 1845, but the exact stones have since disappeared from the field and from memory. What remains is a bed-shaped hole in the landscape, wide enough for love or death, and local in the way that all forgotten tombs are local: present in the telling, absent in the finding.

In 1845 Thomas Fagan (1845-8) visited 'the ruins of an ancient sepulture locally called Dermot and Grania's Bed' in this townland. He described it as consisting of 'one grave 8 feet [c. 2.4m] long and 11/2 feet [c. 0.45m] wide enclosed at either side by a slab of the above length laid edgeways and standing 31/2 feet [c. 1.05m] high and 6 inches [c. 0.15m] thick'. Other, similar graves were supposedly destroyed here. The site is not shown on OS 6-inch maps. Fagan described its location as 5 furlongs (c. 1km) NE of the road from Letterkenny to Falcarragh and on that part of the townland falling within the confines of OS 6-inch sheet 34. A general search in the area indicated by Fagan and local enquiry failed to reveal either a trace of it or information about it. The nature of the site remains uncertain. Fagan 1845-8, book 5, 16. 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, likely a portal dolmen dating to the Neolithic period. Its local association with the legend of Dermot and Grania suggests cultural or folk significance in the region.

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