326 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



had cleared out the small stones fi'om the chamber, as much as we could with- 

 out distui-bing the large slab. The accident is most deplorable, as it ruined 

 what it is no exaggeration to call one of the most impressi^'e and interesting 

 ancient structures remaining in Ireland. 



The plan and sections on Plate XVIII show without need of further 

 description the design of the structure and the relative sizes of its parts. It 

 will be seen that it can also be fairly described as consisting of two chambers 

 separated by a narrow doorway, with two grave-recesses in the outer and three 

 in the inner. The iut^rments had not been confined to the grave-recesses : 

 bone dust, much trampled, was found in places on the floor. The sill of the 

 grave-recess on the left-hand side, within the entrance, was missing : it is 

 restored in dotted lines on the plan. We suspect that by an oversight it was 

 removed by ourselves in clearing out the debris of large and small stones that 

 filled the chamber. 



The perspective view on Plate XIX is designed to illustrate more clearly 

 the elaborate and ingenious construction of this cam. But to prepare a satis- 

 factory ^'iew was found extremely difficult. The narrow doorway in the middle 

 of the chamber makes it next to impossible to find a point of view from which 

 enough of the construction can be seen in one coup d'ceil to be at all informing. 

 Plate Xm, figs. 2-4, shows portions of the building that display the masonry. 

 Fig. 2 is the north-west comer of the western gi-ave-recess in the outer chamber; 

 fig. 3 is the south-east comer of the eastern grave-recess in the inner chamber; 

 fig. i shows the central grave-recess,^ and also the most interesting and 

 suggestive detail of this monument, which it is now time to describe. 



This is a standing stone, 5 feet high, with a fairly imiform thickness of 

 7g inches east to west, and 9 inches north to south. It cannot have ser^'ed 

 any constructional purpose : not only is it too slender, but it seems never to 

 have stood qydte upright, so could not have borne any other stone or stones. 

 The roof of the chamber vertically over this stone must have been weU-nigh 

 16 feet above the groimd, or 11 feet above the top of the pillar. The stone 

 had been snapped across 15 inches above the ground ; in faUing, it cracked 

 the sOI-stone of the central recess behind it, across which it was found lying. 

 The fi-aetured surfaces, however, are both intact and fit exactly. The broken 

 part, however, wiU not stand on its base without support : a little Portland 



1 The orersailing lintels seen in the sections on Plate XVIII above the lintel shown in this photo- 

 graph were in situ when the excavation began, and appear in Plate XIV, fig. 1. After measuring, 

 we were obliged to remove them, as the top lintel (supported by a wooden prop in the photograph) 

 was loose, and the second was cracked loDgitudinaUy, and neither could have stood without the 

 support of the small stones which had filled the chamber completely, and which, of course, we had 

 to clear out. The great slab whose failure caused the collapse of the building is seen on the right- 

 hand side of this photograph, under the foot of the wooden prop. 



