Overview
Moytirra East is a court tomb built somewhere between 4000 and 2500 BC, and it’s an honest ruin: not the largest court cairn in the region, quite knocked about, and often swallowed by summer grass. What it has going for it is legibility. Many of the stones are gone, but enough of the plan survives that you can stand at the entrance and read the whole layout in one look – which makes it a good tomb to visit if you want to actually understand how a court cairn works, rather than just tick off a bigger, busier one.
Locally it’s the Giant’s Grave, after a giant said to have died in the legendary Battle of Moytura – the mythological clash between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomorians. The stones predate the myth by thousands of years; the name is later generations reading a story into a landscape they no longer built in.
What you’re looking at
- The court: an open, semi-circular forecourt that formed the ceremonial approach. It was originally a full circle of stones; centuries of field-clearing have left it as a single curved line.
- The gallery: behind the court, a long, narrow chamber divided by upright jamb stones into four compartments, where the community’s dead were placed. A covering mound of earth and stone once sat over the whole thing and has long since gone – much of it, most likely, into local walls and roads.
- Scale: none of the surviving stones stand much above a metre. Loose boulders lie scattered around, but the area is full of glacial erratics, so not all of them belong to the tomb.
- On site: an information sheet is fixed to the wall beside the iron gate, which is all the interpretation there is.
Getting there
The tomb is about 5km west of Ballyfarnon, on the east side of Lough Arrow, in the townland of Moytirra East. From the N4, turn off for Ballyfarnon; coming into the village, take the left for Highwood, then the first right after Highwood. The tomb is in the field beside the first house on your right, behind an iron gate. There’s room to pull in on the minor road; the walk from the gate to the stones is short and level.
GPS: 54.0760, -8.2834 · Irish Grid: G 81469 14103 · Elevation: 147m
Visiting notes
- Time of year: the one real caveat. In high summer the grass grows in around the stones and can hide the lower courses and make photography a chore. Late autumn through spring gives you a much cleaner look at the structure.
- Light: early morning or late afternoon rakes across the stones and picks out the arrangement better than flat midday sun.
- Footwear: the field is unmade and holds water after rain – boots or sturdy shoes.
- It’s a working farm: stay to the edge of the field, don’t shift any stones, and close the gate behind you.
- Time needed: 15 to 20 minutes covers it.
Nearby
You’re in a dense prehistoric landscape here, and Moytirra is best treated as one stop among several rather than a destination on its own.
- Carrowkeel – the big one: a hilltop passage-tomb complex a short drive away, with a winter-solstice alignment. If you only have time for one megalithic site in the area, make it this.
- Labby Rock – a substantial portal tomb with a huge capstone, in the same townland cluster.
- Heapstown Cairn – a large unopened cairn near the north end of Lough Arrow.
- Castlebaldwin – a ruined castle and more prehistoric sites in the surrounding townlands.
- Kilronan – a 15th-century tower house by Lough Arrow, a much later chapter in the same landscape.