What is recorded here

Four thousand years of rain erased most of the chamber, leaving only scattered stones and a disputed name. Thomas Fagan measured what remained in 1846, yet another hand wrote that the site should not be mapped because its authenticity was doubted. The tomb still lies beside the Ballybofey road, large enough to enter in imagination but no longer certain enough to point without hesitation.

In 1846 Thomas Fagan (1845-8) visited a site called 'Labbagrania' in this townland, 5 furlongs (c. 1km) NW of the road leading from Ballybofey to Donegal town on the holding of Hugh Dermod. He described it as the 'ruins of a pagan sepulture', orientated more or less N-S, which was 12 feet (c. 3.65m) long and 91/2 feet (c. 2.9m) wide. Only a small number of stones were then in place. Three of these measured, on average, 31/2 feet (c. 1.05m) high, 3-31/2 feet (c. 0.9-1.05m) broad and a 1/2 foot to 1 foot (c. 0.15-0.3m) thick. A note alongside Fagan's report in another hand states that this site should not be shown on the OS 6-inch map, which suggests a doubt on the part of the field reviser about its authenticity. In 1989 a wedge tomb (Dg. 98) was discovered in this townland. Fagan's account of the site he called 'Labbagrania' is not sufficiently detailed to permit a definite conclusion about whether it and the wedge tomb are one and the same. Fagan 1845-8, book 13, 3. 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

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