This nice passage tomb is on the top of a hill with a wonderful walk in the woods. It took us about ten minutes from the car park on the northwest side of the hill to the top. The path is a loop, so it is possible to reach the monument from the west or the northeast.
The tomb is also known as Annia's Cove.
It's a set of 11 orthostats arranged in a wedge shaped structure with the entrance to the south (170°). Another stone lies on a side, horizontally, above and behind the large trapezoidal slab to the north of the arrangement. A horrible vent is in the wall behind them.
The gaps between the stones have been filled with modern and regularly shaped small stones.
All the stones carry some kind of decorations, mainly spirals or concentric circles, and a few cupmarks. Though the tomb lacks of the classic gallery or passage to the main chamber, the decorations and motifs on the stones make it similar to some of the tombs at Loughcrew or Newgrange, and allow us to say that this is a passage tomb.
Unfortunately too, some of the stones have been defaced over the years with modern carvings of names and dates.
In order to protect them from further vandalism and weathering, a few decades back an ugly structure had been built over the stones. It is an unsightly concrete room, with a locked gate on the south side and a pyramidal skylight as a roof, enclosed in a green railing without a proper access. Jumping over this railing allows visitors to look down into the room through the dirty and hazy polycarbonate windows, which don't do the site justice and make nearly impossible to take photos of the stones. A horrible service to the visitors after the long walk in the woods.
Another flat stone, very likely from the same tomb, lies on the ground, a few metres southeast from the entrance.
A local man told me that the keys to the gate might be in possess of a shop in Augher, but he wasn't sure of that, neither was he able to tell what shop it was.
We came here for the first time on December 12th, 1995.
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