Another Patrick (Patrician) site and another long cairn, scooped out on its longer axis like at the cairn of the cats 2 kilometres to the south-east, only this time a portal tomb, with the main chamber at the east and then two subsidiary, cist-like chambers at the west.
Nestled in a clearing of a pine forest, a monument in state care with a small car park to its south, you get the sense that it’s never going to be high on most peoples’ itineraries, a lonely haven of quiet escape. The northbound track up through the forest is waterlogged and there is a small, forded stream to traverse before the tomb is revealed through the trees.
The cairn heads away eastwards up a slight incline, the two subsidiary chambers at its rear, western end prominent with huge blocky stones. They are both very box-like with no discernible entrance so maybe two cists inserted into the cairn at a later date than the initial construction. It was excavated in 1899 but I’m not sure if the finds were ever carbon-dated in more modern times. Strikingly, the cored remains of the cairn mirror the remains down the road at Carnagat.
25 metres up along the gash in the cairn is a small portal dolmen/chamber. Both portals remain, recessed by about 2 metres from the front facade of the cairn in court tomb fashion. They’re not the most robust portals I’ve ever seen. The northern stone has fallen southwards and rests on the southern stone. Behind them is a large box-like chamber. Presumably there was a capstone over the portals once upon a time, balanced on the sidestones of the very cist-like chamber.
According to the information in the NISMR, this is a portal tomb consisting of a cairn 27 x 10 x 2m, containing three cists. The one at the east end is large - 6ft by 4ft - and was accessed through two portal stones and a sill.
... this region is rich in places associated with the Patrician mission. A Neolithic chambered cairn on the south-west summit of Knockroe, to the south-east of Clogher, is called Carnfadrig [Carn Phadraig, 'Patrick's mound'], and due east of this, at Altadaven, is St Patrick's Chair and Well, the latter comprising a large cupmark in a rock.
p129 in 'Ireland: An Oxford Archaeological Guide to Sites from Earliest Times to AD 1600', by Andrew Halpin, Conor Newman (2006).
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