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Tibradden : Chambered Cairn

CountyDublin
Grid RefO 149 223
GPSO 14869 22266 (7m)
Longitude6° 16' 45.52" W
Latitude53° 14' 18.1" N
Nearest TownTallaght (7.7 Km)
OS Sheet50
UTM zone29U
UTM x681560.04412428
UTM y5902241.3433672

This site has subsites

Tibradden - Tibradden Cairn - Rock ArtTibradden - Rock Outcrop
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Visit Notes

Saturday, 23rd February 2002

I kept coming across reports from hillwalkers of a 'small Newgrange like' tomb on Two Rock Mountain and was mystified. I knew for a fact that the cairn on Two Rocks was indistinguishable from a cairn as the passage is now hidden by fallen cairn rubble.

After some digging about I finally found out that they were referring to Tibradden the hill on the opposite side of Two Rocks to Three Rocks. The one report said that it contained a bee-hive chamber and passage, but I could find no reference to it on any megalithic web site. I was also given a piece of text detailing that in fact the round chamber was actually built to allow easy access to the kist burial within in the 1850 excavation.

Obviously, I decided that a visit was in order. The walk up from the car park is fairly easy, except for the last 400m or so where you are actually walking along a rocky water course, which must be pretty nasty to walk up after heavy rain.

The cairn itself is mainly intact rising some 3m above ground level and is about 25m in diameter. Before I knew the truth about the passage and round chamber I would have been quite excited by them. The passage appears to have a very close summer solstice alignment.

The walls of the chamber rise to about 1.5m and offer great and welcome shelter from the howling wind that was whipping the snow fall (yes - snow!) into flurries all around me.

Lying on the floor of the chamber is a spiral carved stone (see subsite).

The views alone make this a great place to come. The cairn on Two Rocks, Howth, Montpelier and the Wicklows to the south are a sight to feast upon.

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All Sites Visited On 23rd February 2002    Next Site »

Saturday, 8th April 2006

Is it really four years since I came up here? Wow! It doesn't seem that long. At least it wasn't snowing this time - just intermittent hail and lightning!

It really was great to come back and take a good look around. The visibility was not very good last time, but today the light was very good and the air clear. Looking across past the west side of Montpelier (County Dublin), I noticed that Athgoe Hill sits nicely in the gap betwen it and Saggart Hill. Another nice alignment from this spot.

Looking southeast along the ridge the views to The Great Sugarloaf Mountain are stunning. Once again I searched the vertical faces of the rockfall below the cairn for the cross and carved figure, but couldn't find them.

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All Sites Visited On 8th April 2006    Next Site »

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Directions

From Glencullen take the R116 north west for around 6km until you reach the car park clearly marked Tibradden on the right hand side of the road. Be warned this car park gets locked at 4pm. From there basically keep walking upwards and south around the winding track. Go to the first bend and double back, miss out the next left track and then shortly after the next left angle turn right. You should be walking in between the plantation on your right and a fence on your left after about 200m. Keep on walking along this rocky path and it will take you straight to the cairn.

Miscellanea

There is a burial urn in Dublin National Museum that was taken from this cairn.

Regarded as a passage-tomb it contains a circular roofless chamber of dry-walled construction 10 and a half feet in diameter, with a lintelled passage leading in from the NE. When opened in 1849 the
cairn apparently covered only a central kist which was found to contain cremated bones and a food vessel. A secondary urn-burial was also found, but the account makes no reference to the existing chamber. Conservation work undertaken in 1956 confirmed the suspicion that the chamber and passage were constructed circa 1850 to give access to the kist, which occupies the centre of the chamber.

from Estyn Evans: PREHISTORIC AND EARLY CHRISTIAN IRELAND - A FIELD GUIDE
(1966)

Fame awaits, but out of context. This site gets a mention in Robert Graves' "The White Goddess" as being a passage tomb. A factoid we now know to be incorrect.

Random Gazetteer

A Random Selection of Nearby Monuments

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3.7 Km (ESE) there is a Wedge Tomb at Ballyedmonduff.
8.7 Km (ESE) there is a Wedge Tomb at Shankhill.
1.5 Km (N) there is a Portal Tomb at Larch Hill Scout Camp known as Larch Hill.
8.5 Km (W) there is a Artificial Mound at Knockanvinidee.
9.7 Km (SW) there is a Passage Tomb at 5 km East of Kilbride known as Seefin Hill (Co. Wicklow).

A Selection of Other Chambered Cairns

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