Ards Beg / An Ardaidh Bheag

Portal Tomb

This partly collapsed portal tomb is located in a garden behind a house in Ards Beg Townland. It is believed the capstone may have slipped from the two portal stones during a storm in around 1800. At the present time the back of the capstone is resting on the ground and the front is held up by the door-stone, which is now leaning inwards to the chamber, and part of the southern side-stone. The two portal stones were both standing when a photograph of the tomb was taken in around the 1900s, but since then the southern portal had fallen across the front of the chamber, sometime in the recent past, this portal stone was crudely re-erected and now stands in a block of concrete. In the image below we can see the northern side of the monument, with the large two metre high portal stone on the left and the two side-stones in the foreground. A single south side-stone, originally over three metres in length has broken in two and the eastern part has also fallen into the chamber.

The chamber of the portal tomb is facing in an ENE diection. there is a single pillar stone at the back of the monument. I am not sure how this stone fits into this tomb, but records tell us there was another smaller chamber located behind this one, which is not usual for Donegal, Kilclooney More also had two chambers in close proximity to each other.

Front of the portal tomb