What is recorded here

Bailey Beag is a steep conical mound on the machair plain of Inishkea North, sitting twenty metres above the rocky shore and one hundred and fifty metres below its larger neighbour Bailey Mór. Erosion has stripped much of its original bulk, yet the summit still holds a low cairn and scattered upright stones that may be remnants of a house noted in the late 1930s. Seashells scattered across the slopes hint at domestic life, while the nearby graveyard and ecclesiastical site suggest the mound served as both home and marker within a settled coastal landscape.

On a machair plain on the SE side of Inishkea North, 20m N of the rocky shoreline and 150m S of a larger mound known as Bailey Mór (MA023-014003-). There is an ecclesiastical site (MA023-014033001-) c. 50m to NE and a graveyard (MA023-0140012-) 100m to SE. Known in local tradition as ‘Bailey Beag’, it consists of a conical steep-sided mound (diam. c. 23m; H 3.8m), which appears at its core to be a sand hill. The 1838 and 1920 OS 6-inch maps depict it as larger in diameter than the surviving remains, suggesting that erosion has greatly diminished it. The grass-covered slopes have a rough cladding of large stones and slabs (some up to 1m in max. dim.) and the narrow summit is crowned with a small, low cairn of stones (c. 3m N-S; c. 3m E-W; H 0.6-0.7m). Most of the stones on the summit appear loose but a few are set upright, possibly part of a structure, perhaps remnants of the house (MA023-014032-) which Henry (1945, 140; House I) noted here in the late 1930’s. A thin scatter of seashells, likely to be occupation debris, is visible on the top and slopes of the mound where grass cover has eroded. It is a National Monument in state ownership (no. 379). Attached images: MA023-014031-_01.JPG Viewed from S with Bailey Mór mound (MA023-014003-) in background MA023-014031-_02.JPG Viewed from SW Compiled by: Jane O’Shaughnessy Date of upload: 27 July 2023

A Neolithic passage tomb; its location on a prominent coastal machair plain suggests it may have had ritual or ceremonial significance within the local landscape.

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