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The Portal Tomb at Strabane is a Neolithic megalithic monument comprising a stone chamber with a distinctive portal entrance arrangement, typical of these structures built across Ireland and Britain during the fourth millennium before Christ. Constructed from locally available stone, the tomb would have served as a communal burial place for the early farming communities of the region during the Neolithic period.
The monument sits upon bedrock formed from the Argyll Group, a sequence of metamorphic rocks—psammite, semipelite and pelite—laid down during the Neoproterozoic era over 600 million years ago. These hard, ancient rocks provided the building material for the portal tomb's substantial stone construction and remain the underlying geology of this part of County Tyrone.
The Portal Tomb at Strabane is protected as a scheduled monument by the Historic Environment Division of the Department for Communities under reference 13895. Portal tombs of this type were among the earliest monumental structures erected in the British Isles, reflecting both the social organisation and spiritual beliefs of Neolithic farming societies who migrated to Ireland and Britain with domesticated crops and livestock.
Portal tomb is a scheduled monument protected by Department for Communities NI under reference 13895. View the official record →
The Portal Tomb at Strabane is a Neolithic megalithic monument comprising a stone chamber with a distinctive portal entrance arrangement, typical of these structures built across Ireland and Britain during the fourth millennium before Christ. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by DfC Northern Ireland (NISMR) under reference 13895.
Portal 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.
Portal 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 13895.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Slievebeg, standing stones. four stone circles & alignment (3.5 km), Corick abbey. franciscan friary & graveyard (3.9 km), Rath (5.6 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 14 strands of Portal 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.
Portal tomb stands on Argyll Group, bedrock that formed in the Neoproterozoic. The rock here is psammite, semipelite and pelite.