tombs antrim

A Neolithic court-tomb of c.3000 B.C. with a forecourt of low stones facing south-eastwards and giving access to a two-chambered gallery placed in an ill-defined oval mound. Local tradition explains it as the grave of Finn MacCumhaill's poet-warrior son Ossian (Oisin). His faked 'songs' as 'translated' by James MacPherson in 1762-3 led to the start of the romantic movement in literature when published in Scotland, which can suitably be seen in the distance from this evocative site in the Glens...

It has a more than semicircular stone-paved forecourt, in which stone axes were found. Portals lead into the roofless burial chamber, placed in a long stone-revetted mound. Excavations in 1935 and again in 1975 showed that behind the chambered burial gallery there was a passage, originally timber-roofed, containing pits but also much cremated bone, suggesting that - unusually - the passage may well have been the location of the crematorium itself. A number of Neolithic pottery sherds and flin...