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Giant's Grave is a Neolithic megalithic tomb situated near Cookstown in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. The monument consists of stone chambers characteristic of passage graves or court cairns constructed during the Neolithic period, when communities across Britain and Ireland erected such communal burial monuments. The site sits upon bedrock composed of Silurian mafic igneous rock, part of an unnamed igneous intrusion that formed during the Ordovician to Silurian geological periods. This underlying geology of darker, dense volcanic stone would have been familiar to the monument's builders as part of their local landscape.
The tomb's construction reflects the architectural sophistication and labour organisation of early farming communities. Such megalithic monuments served as focal points for the landscape, containing multiple inhumations within stone-built chambers that were originally covered by substantial cairns of stone and earth. The effort required to quarry, transport and position the massive stones demonstrates the social importance of communal burial practices and the spiritual significance these places held for the communities that built them.
Giant's Grave is protected by the Historic Environment Division of the Department for Communities under reference 14494. The monument remains an important archaeological resource that contributes to understanding Neolithic settlement, religious belief and social organisation in the region during the fourth and third millennia before the present.
Giant's grave. megalithic tomb is a scheduled monument protected by Department for Communities NI under reference 14494. View the official record →
Giant's Grave is a Neolithic megalithic tomb situated near Cookstown in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by DfC Northern Ireland (NISMR) under reference 14494.
Giant's grave. megalithic tomb dates from the neolithic period, and is classified as a megalithic tomb. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
Giant's grave. megalithic tomb is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, legally protected by DfC Northern Ireland (NISMR) — the body responsible for designating and safeguarding heritage sites in Ni. The official designation reference is 14494.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including The moat. mound (2.1 km), Trackway (5.3 km), The black fort. rath (5.7 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 14 strands of Giant's grave. megalithic tomb's history, each drawn from the record and mapped to the exact spot:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Giant's grave. megalithic tomb stands on Unnamed Igneous Intrusion, Ordovician To Silurian, bedrock that formed in the Silurian. The rock here is mafic igneous-rock.