Roughly six kilometres south-west of the green and lovely lanes of Killashandra is the dual-court tomb of Drumhart. Its relative isolation means that it is so rarely visited that I couldn’t find any photos of it online. Anthony Weir mentions it at irishmegaliths.org.uk. It has a brief entry in the archaeological inventory of Co. Cavan, culled from the more extensive entry in the Survey of Megalithic Tombs of Ireland Volume III, published in 1972, including a precise plan but minus the usual photo/plate. This last is probably due to the fact that when they visited it, de Valera and Ó’Nualláin report that “The monument is very heavily overgrown.” Not any more.
Fourwinds, who created the original site post here, gave it the designation of ‘chambered tomb’. He’s not wrong – but a more satisfying category would be the obvious court tomb. I can’t check what he has it as on his megalithomania.com site as this hasn’t been accessible for quite a few years now, a huge loss to the Irish stone hunter community. Ah well.
The people on whose land the monument lies are lovely. They were more than happy to allow us to head down into the little glade for a butcher’s. The tomb is in quite a ruinous state, neither end having much of a court left – the western the better of the two, the eastern non-existent. In fact all that remains of the eastern tomb is the box-like first chamber and its jambstones. This has been colonised by a thorn tree but is quite distinct with the the sidestones roughly half a metre high and the chamber itself 4 metres long.
The western tomb is the more interesting, with a roughly 10 metre long, three-chambered gallery and some scant remnants of a court. None of the chamber stones, except the entrance jambs and some of the first chamber, rise much above the surrounding turf, and the floor of the whole gallery is filled with soil and is grassed over. Its current condition leaves one wondering was it every accessible post-construction, or was it closed off after it was roofed over and embedded in its cairn. Certainly you would have had to be quite tiny indeed to be able to enter the tomb.
There’s a couple more anomalies at Drumhart – the two tombs, though generally east-west pointing, are not aligned. The remains of the eastern tomb may, according to de Valera and Ó’Nualláin, be the second or third chamber of a three-chambered gallery and what I took to be entrance jambs could be segmenting stones, though the archaeologists do settle on it being the first chamber. Either way, a continuation of a line straight through the middle of this chamber would not hit the imagined backstone of the western chamber but miss it by a couple of metres to the north. There’s also what I thought to be a subsidiary chamber, south-east of the end of the western tomb. It’s possible that the lads missed this due to its overgrown state on their visit, though there is one set stone in the correct position on their plan.
We passed a while here, snooping around and up onto the rocky outcrop west of the tomb. It’s secluded, and peaceful and not yet overgrown. It’s marked on the OS map and the landowners said that they get a visitor maybe once a year. It’s not on the way anywhere spectacular but is well worth a visit if you find yourself in the locale.