placenamesClontygora
Cluainte Gabhra
Clontygora’s court tomb preserves a monumental burial place of the first farming communities in south Armagh.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- Cluainte Gabhra · Irish · main form · validated name
- Clontygora · English · main form
Place & story
The King’s Ring
Known locally as the King’s Ring, Clontygora Court Tomb stands in the south-eastern part of the Slieve Gullion ring-dyke. The Ring of Gullion heritage guide places its construction within the early farming landscape around 3500 BC. Excavation in 1937 recovered cremated bone, pottery and worked flint, and showed that an elongated stone cairn had originally covered the burial gallery. [2]
The court and burial chambers
Tall upright stones define the tomb’s deep U-shaped forecourt, with a pair of substantial portal stones marking the entrance to the gallery. National Museums NI records paving in the court and a shallow pit beneath it. Stone removal has damaged the gallery, but the first chamber retains its side slabs and capstone. Surviving jambs and sills indicate a sequence of at least two, possibly three, chambers. [3]
An unexpected discovery in 2004
Archaeologist Nicholas Beer monitored a small excavation for an information board just north of the tomb in 2004. Half a metre below ground, a stone feature containing voids appeared. The limited excavation did not allow further investigation, so he suggested only that it might belong to an underground chamber or souterrain. The report preserves that uncertainty, recording an additional archaeological feature beside the much older visible monument. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Armagh
- Barony
- Orior Upper
- Civil parish
- Killevy
- Coordinates
- 54.11764, -6.34816 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 56880 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Clontygora. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Uncovering the Past: Clontygora Court Tomb, page23 · Ring of Gullion Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
- Dig into Ancient Ireland: archaeological sites, Clontygora, page11 · National Museums NI
- 2004:0073,Clontygora Court Tomb,AE/04/140 · Nicholas Beer, Queen’s University Belfast; Excavations.ie
- Clontygora Court Tomb illustration: based on a Clontygora Court Tomb by Chris Andrews. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-12-20. How this page was prepared.