Mount Venus

Mount Venus (or Cill an Véineas in Irish) is a sacred megalithic site in Edmondstown, County Dublin, Ireland on the Mount Venus Road. It is a national heritage site.

It has been described by Borlase^{[disambiguation needed ]} as one of the most magnificent in the world. It encompasses a massive cap stone weighing in at 44 tons. It is partly collapsed on its supports and overgrown. The capstone lies against a single large upright megalith.

When it was complete it would have been a 15 ft (4.6 m). high chamber entrance. Only one of the two great portal stones survives upright. The capstone has fallen and leans on this portal stone. The other portal stone (15 feet long) lies next to the monument. A third dressed stone 4 metres long by 1 metre wide lies in front^[1]. Borlase believed this to be a distinct class of tomb - an earth-fast dolmen, so-called from the capstone's contact with the ground at the back (another example being Howth dolmen).

Access to this megalith is through a gap in a hedge beside the DSPCA on a site which was once a golf course.

References

1. ^ The Modern Antiquarian

External links

• 1851 image

Coordinates: 53°15′38.5″N 6°18′39.33″W / 53.260694°N 6.310925°W / 53.260694; -6.310925