What is recorded here

Megalithic tombs in Donegal often hide under farmland, roads or forgotten fields. In Liscooly, one stone still stands while three others disappeared during survey work in the 1840s. The lost stones may have marked a grave, a boundary or a gift to the land. What remains is enough to show that the field was never empty.

The standing stone referred to in the heading (Lacy 1983) is the only surviving one of 'four remarkable stones...two of them placed so as to form a grave' that stood in the same field (OS Revision Name Book, 1845). The three missing stones stood c. 75m S of the extant one. The name 'Giant's Grave' written beside these on a pre-publication field map of 1845 was shortly thereafter crossed out, as the three stones were removed by mid-1846. Thomas Fagan (1845-8) visited here between 7 July and 29 August 1846 and remarked of the extant standing stone that it was the remaining one of a number of stones that had 'lately' stood in the same field. The nature of the supposed 'Giant's Grave' is not known. It is worth recording that near to this place (no precise location is given) workmen engaged in levelling a fort found 'a stone coffin containing bones, and an urn, with some other ornaments' (OS Revision Name Book, 1845). This may have been a Bronze Age cist burial. OS Revision Name Book, sheet 79 (1845) [12]; Fagan 1845-8, book 12, 4; Lacy 1983, 83, no. 447; SMR 1987, 79:13; RMP 1995, 79:13. 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 Liscooly is likely a portal dolmen dating to the Neolithic period. Its significance lies in the historical record of multiple stones once forming a funerary structure, reflecting early megalithic burial practices in the region.

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