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Giants' Graves is a court tomb, a monumental megalithic burial structure of the Neolithic period, located near Dungannon in County Tyrone. Court tombs are among the earliest forms of communal burial architecture in Ireland, typically comprising a central open court flanked by burial chambers. This example sits on bedrock of the Leitrim Group, a sequence of Namurian sandstones, mudstones, siltstones and conglomerates that characterises the local geology of central Ulster.
The monument is protected by the Historic Environment Division under reference 15945. Court tombs served Neolithic communities as focal points for ritual and ancestor veneration, their distinctive design allowing multiple generations to access the burial chambers from the open court. The local stone resources would have provided the material for construction, with builders selecting suitable blocks from the surrounding landscape.
Today, Giants' Graves preserves evidence of Neolithic funerary practice and social organisation in this region. The survival of the monument allows modern understanding of how early farming communities structured their landscape with permanent ritual structures, and reflects the cultural investment these societies placed in commemoration of the dead.
Giants' graves. court tomb is a scheduled monument protected by Department for Communities NI under reference 15945. View the official record →
Giants' Graves is a court tomb, a monumental megalithic burial structure of the Neolithic period, located near Dungannon in County Tyrone. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by DfC Northern Ireland (NISMR) under reference 15945.
Giants' graves. court 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.
Giants' graves. court 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 15945.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Giant's grave. court tomb (0.8 km), Large counterscarp hilltop enclosure - hillfort? (3.2 km), Rath (3.7 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 14 strands of Giants' graves. court 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.
Giants' graves. court tomb stands on Leitrim Group, bedrock that formed in the Namurian. The rock here is sandstone, mudstone, siltstone and conglomerate.