Portal Tomb Mount Venus
The portal Tomb Mount Venus (also called Woodtown Dolmen) is located not far from the southwestern "Western Parkway" section of Motorway 50 and near the "Mount Venus Road" near Tallaght in South Dublin in Ireland in confusing terrain on the eastern flank of Mount Venus Hills. It lies 200 m east of the Owerdoher (river), which flows into the River Dodder at Rathfarnham; with the mountains “Sliabh na Craobhai” in the south, “Sliabh Thigh Brodain” in the southeast and “Sliabh Chill Mochiog” in the east. As portal Tombs be megalithic on the British Isles referred to in which two equally high upright stones therebetween with a door stone which form the front of a chamber which is covered with a massive part endstone.
Although partially collapsed and overgrown by bracken and scrub, the Tomb portal was once a particularly large megalithic complex. It was at the entrance, where only the broken off part of the once 4.5 m high portal stone now stands, against which the massive capstone, about 6.0 m long, 3.0 m wide and 1.9 m thick, rests , about 6.4 m high. The other end of the capstone is on the floor today. The second portal stone, almost 4.5 m long, lies next to it.
William Borlase (1695–1772) believed that this was a variant of the Portal Tomb, which he called "earth-fast dolmen" because of the contact of the capstone with the ground at the rear end (another example would be Aideen's Grave on Howth in the same county). However, the conceptualization is not recognized by modern archeology. It is possible that the capstone on the rear side was never raised, but as other monuments show, such achievements were well within the capabilities of the Neolithic master builders. The complex was probably robbed of some stones.
See also
literature
- Kenneth McNally: Standing Stones and other monuments of early Ireland . Appletree, Belfast 1984, ISBN 0-86281-121-X .
Web links
- Brief description (English) and picture (last accessed on December 10, 2012)
Coordinates: 53 ° 15 ′ 40.8 " N , 6 ° 18 ′ 37.7" W.