What is recorded here

Ancient Grave is a cist at the bottom of a south-facing slope in County Clare, where two skeletons were found in 1885 with their feet pointing east. The narrow stone chamber held them not extended but folded, suggesting urgency, belief, or a local custom now lost. That small grave still gives the place its name because it preserved a human shape beneath ordinary grassland.

At the bottom of a S-facing slope in a field of reclaimed grassland. Named ‘Ancient Grave’ on the 1916 OS 6-inch map. Westropp (1900, 431) described a cist in Roughaun near Cahermore (CL016-052001-) c. 150m to the NW with two skeletons ‘not extended, but with their feet to the east’. In 1907 he gave dimensions for the cist (L 1.67m; Wth 1.1m) and noted that the burials were discovered in 1885 by a Mr. G Fitzgerald (Westropp 1907, 464). An outcropping rock (L 1m; T 0.15m) at the S extent of a cairn (CL016-054002-) may be the partial remains of the cist. Compiled by: Mary Tunney and Lynda McCormack Date of upload: 18 May 2022

Portal dolmen; likely dates to the Neolithic period (c. 4000–2500 BCE). Its significance lies in its association with early megalithic funerary traditions in the region.

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