Altar Wedge Tomb

Located at Toormore Bay on the Mizen Peninsula, 7km west of Schull, lies this simple slab-built chamber running ENE-WSW. The orientation is very important as it allows for the tomb to catch the setting sun on the 1^st of November, marking the end of harvest and the beginning of winter. Samhain is one of four Gaelic seasonal festivals, the other are Imbolc, Bealtaine, and Lughnasa.

This wedge tomb was excavated in 1989 by Dr. William F. O’Brien, and amongst the finds were deposits of limpet and periwinkle shells, fish bones, and a small amount of cremated human bone. Outside the tomb, finds included flint, two-end scrappers, and a broken hollow scarper. The tomb is thought to date from 2500-2000BC. Evidence of shallow pits on its interior are suggested to be from food offerings to ancestral spirits.

The term altar may refer to the wedge tombs later use as a mass rock. The wedge tomb has two rows of orthostats with three slabs each and one roof stone, with the other rested at the western side of the tomb.

Wedge tombs form part of four megalithic monuments in Ireland including court tombs, portal dolmens and passage-graves. The Wedge tomb is particular to Ireland and considered the youngest of our Stone Age monuments.

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This national monument is protected in accordance with the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014