Brownshill Portal Tomb

A portal tomb is so called because the entrance to the burial chamber is marked by a pair of tall portal stones and covered with a single massive capstone which rests on the portals and slopes downwards towards the rear.

The capstone at Brownshill weighs about 150 tons and is probably the heaviest of its kind in Europe.
Most portal tombs were surrounded by a mound or cairn of smaller stones. Though no trace of this mound survives here, the artist's impression gives some idea of what the tomb might have looked like about 5,000 years ago.

Brownshill also called Karnanstown has not been excavated, so we know very little about it, but both burnt and unburnt burials haave been found in other portal tombs. Pottery vessels, flint arrowheads and scraprs and personal ornaments such as bon pins, pendants and stone bebaddds have been found burid togethr with the bodies in these tomobs.