Creevykeel is older than the pyramids at Giza. The court tomb beside the N15 north of Cliffony was raised around 3500 BC, roughly 5,500 years ago, by some of the first farmers to work this corner of north Sligo. It is one of the largest and best-preserved court tombs in Ireland, and unusually complete: you can walk into the court and read the whole plan on the ground.
What you’re looking at
The monument is a long trapezoidal cairn of stones, about 55 metres from end to end, broad at the eastern front and tapering to the west. Enter from the east through a short passage and you reach the court itself – an oval, fully enclosed space measuring roughly 15 by 9 metres. That closed court is what marks Creevykeel out. Most court tombs open their court in a U toward the front; a full, ringed court like this one is the rarer form.
Beyond the court, a pair of jamb stones marks the way into the burial gallery, split into two chambers. It was once roofed with corbelled stone and buried under the cairn. The stone is hard local sandstone, grey with a bluish cast. Much of what stands today was reset during excavation, so the walls sit neater than most field ruins.
The 1935 dig
Creevykeel was excavated over six weeks in the summer of 1935 by the fourth Harvard Archaeological Mission, led by Hugh O’Neill Hencken. Twenty-seven workers cleared the whole cairn by hand, in what is reckoned the first modern scientific excavation in Ireland.
They found four cremation burials in small pits in the court, Neolithic pottery both plain and decorated, flint arrowheads and scrapers, two polished stone axeheads, a flint knife about 13cm long, and a couple of clay balls. None of it is on show at the site.
Reused by iron-smelters
The tomb had a second life thousands of years after it was built. In the Early Christian period, metalworkers moved into the abandoned court and set up a furnace, leaving hearths and heavy deposits of iron slag behind – around 30kg of it in the bottom of the smelting pit. Occupying old tombs was a habit of early smiths, who were credited with a touch of the otherworldly.
Getting there
The tomb sits right on the N15, the Sligo to Bundoran road, about 50 metres north of Creevykeel crossroads and 2km north-east of Cliffony. There is a small parking area at the roadside and a short, level path in. It is an OPW national monument, unguided, free and open all year. Fifteen minutes is enough to walk the court and the gallery.
You are in good company here. Mullaghmore and Classiebawn Castle are ten minutes up the coast, the Armada wrecks and fossils of Streedagh Beach a little to the south, and the flat table-top of Benbulben fills the view inland.
The honest bit
This is a roadside ruin, not a day out. There is no visitor centre, no café, no toilets and next to no signage to tell you what you are seeing. Traffic hums past on the N15 the whole time you stand there. To a passer-by it can read as a field of grey stones. Fix the plan in your head first – court, then jamb stones, then the two chambers – or pull up the layout on your phone at the gate, and it all snaps into focus. Pair it with Mullaghmore or a run up the coast to Bundoran and the short stop earns its place.