Passage tomb in Finner

This monument, like the court tomb (Dg. 57) in the same townland that stood close to it, has not been found. It is known only from accounts written toward the end of the 19th century. These refer to its partial demolition to provide stones for wall-building. Two drawings, both signed by W.F. Wakeman and dated 11 June 1880 (Wakeman 1878-82), and a third, now in the Royal Irish Academy (RIA MS 3 C 27, no. 16), which is undated and unattributed but also probably by Wakeman, show a flat-topped cairn with what appears to be a lintelled opening at or close to its edge. The captions to the three drawings, in combination, describe the monument as a ruined chambered cairn measuring 120 or 121 paces around, in which several unburnt human skeletons were found. It seems from the captions to two of the drawings and a published account by Wakeman (1896, 298-9) that the cairn was encompassed by a circle of stones. Little is known of the chamber, which, according to Borlase (1897, 238), measured 9 feet (c. 2.75m) long by 6 feet 5 inches (c. 1.95m) wide. The possibility that it was a passage tomb is strengthened by the occurrence of a definite passage tomb in the same townland, the next to be described. Wakeman 1876-8a, 105 (this site appears to be one of those referred to as occurring on the coast at Bundoran); Wakeman 1878-82, 59 (sketches); Allingham 1879, 109; Kinahan 1879-82 (destruction of cairn and other monuments 'near Bundoran'); RIA MS 3 C 27, no. 16; Wood-Martin 1887-8, 159; Wood-Martin 1888, 161; Wakeman 1896, 298-9; Anon. 1897a; Anon. 1897b, 1063-4, 1536; Anon. 1897c, 712-13; Borlase 1897, 237 (fig. 222), 238 (there was confusion on Borlase's part about this monument; the opening sentence in his descriptive piece on the sites at Finner relates to this site, as does, although Borlase thought it a different site, the entire second paragraph, where he quotes from Wood-Martin's earlier account); The Donegal Independent, 12 and 19 February 1897; Lockwood 1901, 88-9 (drawing, fig. 8); Herity 1974, 215, Dg. 14; Emerson 1986, 55 (quoting from regimental news sheet of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers of September 1898: 'an old Irish cairn'); Ó Nualláin 1983a, 37, no. 89; Ó Nualláin 1989, 128. 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).