Creevykeel Court Tomb

The monument lies 50 metres north of Creevykeel cross-roads. The original name for the monument is Caiseal an Bhaoisgin, the Fort of Bhaoisgin, Tobar an Bhaoisgin being the name of the well near the cairn. A second megalithic monument existed 300 metres to the north, but it was demolished around 1890.

The monument consists of a long, trapezoid-shaped cairn of stones which measures 55.5 meters along its east - west axis, 25 meters at the wider eastern facade, and 10 meters wide at the western end or tail. The stones are a hard local sandstone with a bluish tint. The cairn encloses an oval-shaped full court 15 by 9 meters with an entrance passage through the east side. The entrance to the main chamber is located at the centre of a megalithic facade on the west side of the court. The chamber is made up of two large compartments divided by a pair of jambs, which presumably supported an inner lintel. Evidence of large corbel slabs used for roofing survives in the inner chamber. In the west end of the cairn three subsidiary chambers were built into the body of the monument; they have been described as small passage-graves, but seem to date from a later Neolithic addition to the original monument.

The tomb was excavated from 25 July to 4 September in 1935 by the fourth Harvard Archaeological Mission, an American collaboration with the Irish Free State Government. The director was Hugh Hencken, Curator of European Archaeology at the Peabody Museum in Harvard. Twenty-seven workers were involved, many of them local labourers hired under a State employment scheme. The cairn material was removed entirely, leaving the large boulders in their original positions, and was replaced after the excavation.

The excavators found that the large structural pieces of sandstone were resting on the old ground surface rather than being placed in sockets. A section of cobbled and paved surface of Neolithic date covered the western end of the court, with a large, shallow pit 25cm deep filled with sand beneath the cobbles. Evidence of three fires was found within the western end of the court, beneath the cobbles. The entrance to the double chamber is flanked by four orthostats averaging two meters in height, and the chamber is accessed by an opening 80 cm wide. The chamber is nine meters long and three meters wide, divided by a pair of orthostats. Hencken termed the outer chamber C1 and the inner chamber C2. The large lintel was found lying within the chamber and had to be moved to allow excavation.