Dooey's Cairn

Dooey's Cairn (also known as Ballymacaldrack Court Tomb) is less than a mile south-east of Dunloy, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, just off the B16 road and in the townland of Ballymacaldrack. Grid ref: D021183. It is an impressive court tomb, with a u-shaped forecourt at the south-west end, comprising 11 massive, well shaped stones. The name comes from the family who placed the monument in State Care in 1976.cite web | title=Ballymacaldrack Court Tomb | work=The Modern Antiquarian | url=http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/1063/ballymacaldrack.html | accessdate=2007-12-05] It is a State Care Historic Monument, in Ballymoney Borough Council area, grid ref: D0215 1830. [cite web | title=Dooey's Cairn | work=Environment and Heritage Service NI - State Care Historic Monuments | url=http://www.ehsni.gov.uk/state_care_monuments_2007.pdf | accessdate=2007-12-05]

Features

Dooey's Cairn is a court grave on the eastern side of Long Mountain, a prominent north-south ridge, which is rich in prehistoric remains. It was excavated in 1935 and 1975 and is a flat-topped cairn of stones with traces of a retaining kerb on the long sides and has a U-shaped forecourt of 11 uprights at its south-west end. Broken fragments of plain and decorated round-bottomed pottery bowls were found in the forecourt, suggesting that some ritual may have taken place there. Two portal stones mark the entrance from the forecourt into a small chamber, with a roughly cobbled floor. A polished stone axe was found between the portals during excavation and on the floor of the chamber fragments of pottery, flint arrowheads and a stone bead were found. Beyond the chamber, through another pair of stones, was a cremation passage with boulder walls and a flagged floor, interrupted by three pits. The first pit held a wooden post, and the third pit at the end of the passage was full of cremated human bones, the remains of 5 or 6 adults, both male and female. Radiocarbon dating has dated the cremated remains to around 3,000 BC and the blocking of the forecourt to about 500 years later. The cremation passage is the only one known so far in Ireland, but similar features are found in Scotland and north-east England. 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 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 flints came to light during the excavation. [cite web | title=Ballymacaldrack 'Dooey's Cairn' court-tomb | work=Go Ireland.com | url=http://antrim.goireland.com/scripts/low/xq/asp/areaid.167/areatype.C/cat.9/SubjectID.82/PremisesID.13810/qx/premises.htm | accessdate=2007-12-05]

Court graves were built as communal burial monuments by early farming communities of the Neolithic period (4 to 5,000 years ago). In Ireland they are mainly confined to the northern third of the country.

References