Mount Venus (or ''Cill an Véineas'' in '' Irish'') is a sacred

megalithic A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. There are over 35,000 in Europe alone, located widely from Sweden to the Mediterranean sea. The ...

site in

Edmondstown Edmondstown (), sometimes spelt ''Edmundstown'', is an outer suburb of Dublin, in the jurisdiction of South Dublin. It is situated on the R116 regional road, south of Ballyboden and north of Rockbrook, in the valley of the Owendoher River ...

County Dublin "Action to match our speech" , image_map = Island_of_Ireland_location_map_Dublin.svg , map_alt = map showing County Dublin as a small area of darker green on the east coast within the lighter green background of ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

on the Mount Venus Road. It is a national heritage site. It has been described by

Borlase Borlase is a surname and masculine given name. A branch of the family De Taillefer, of Périgord, who were descended from the Count of Angoulême, came to England before the reign of Henry III (1207–1272). A king granted lands in the parish of ...

as one of the most magnificent in the world. It encompasses a massive capstone weighing in at 44 tons. It is partly collapsed on its supports and overgrown, and it has been suggested that this was a result of the

1755 Lisbon earthquake The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, also known as the Great Lisbon earthquake, impacted Portugal, the Iberian Peninsula, and Northwest Africa on the morning of Saturday, 1 November, Feast of All Saints, at around 09:40 local time. In combination with ...

, as well as the 1690 Caernarfon earthquake. The capstone lies against a single large upright

megalith A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. There are over 35,000 in Europe alone, located widely from Sweden to the Mediterranean sea. The ...

. When it was complete it would have been a . high chamber entrance. Only one of the two great portal stones survives upright. The capstone has fallen and leans on this portal stone. The other portal stone (15 feet long) lies next to the monument. A third dressed stone 4 metres long by 1 metre wide lies in front.The Modern Antiquarian
/ref> Borlase believed this to be a distinct class of tomb - an ''earth-fast''

dolmen A dolmen () or portal tomb is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of two or more upright megaliths supporting a large flat horizontal capstone or "table". Most date from the early Neolithic (40003000 BCE) and were somet ...

, so-called from the

capstone CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) is a lunar orbiter that will test and verify the calculated orbital stability planned for the Lunar Gateway space station. The spacecraft is a 12- ...

's contact with the ground at the back (another example being

Howth Howth ( ; ; non, Hǫfuð) is an affluent peninsular village and outer suburb of Dublin, Ireland. The district as a whole occupies the greater part of the peninsula of Howth Head, which forms the northern boundary of Dublin Bay, and includes ...

dolmen). Access to this megalith is through a gap in a hedge beside the

DSPCA The Dublin Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or DSPCA is a registered charity, established in Ireland in 1840 to prevent cruelty to animals in the Dublin Region. History The Dublin Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was es ...

on a site which was once a golf course.

References

External links

1851 image
{{Coord, 53, 15, 38.5, N, 6, 18, 39.33, W, source:enwiki-plaintext-parser, display=title Rathfarnham Megalithic monuments in Ireland Stone Age Europe