Kilmonaster

A landscape of megalithic monuments in the lowlands east of Raphoe, overlooked by Croaghan Hill. Several of the monuments recorded here are damaged or survive only partly, which makes this a landscape to be reconstructed as much as visited.

Kilmonaster is the place where Beyond the Bend began: a group of townlands where the recorded archaeology is richer than what can now be seen on the ground. Antiquarian notes, early Ordnance Survey mapping and the twentieth-century county survey each describe monuments here, and not all of them survive in the condition in which they were recorded.[1][2]

This record treats Kilmonaster as a landscape rather than a single monument. The questions that matter are spatial: how the recorded tombs relate to one another, to Croaghan Hill, to the River Deele and the wider plain, and what has been lost since they were first described.

The monument inventory for this landscape is being compiled from the national record and the 1983 county survey. Until that work is complete, individual tombs are not yet listed here as separate site records.

No boundary is drawn. The extent of the Kilmonaster landscape is a research question, not a given.