Schull’s Bronze Age

The human story in Mizen peninsula around Schull began many thousands of years prior to the arrival of Christianity in the 5th century AD. There are no written sources for this prehistoric period and we must instead turn to the physical record. The earliest inhabitants left behind their settlements, artefacts, burials and sacred places. Around our village of Schull remains include metal objects, boulder burials, rock art, stone circles, wedge tombs and most importantly copper mines.

Alter Wedge Tombs

Built from local slabs this wedge shaped tomb is one of a dozen on the Mizen peninsula. They were first erected at the end of the stone age, around 3000 to 2000 BC with its entrance deliberately lined up with the Mizen peak. Archaeologists recently uncovered burnt human bones, which the radiocarbon dated to about 2000 BC and believed that the tomb continued to be used as a sacred site.
Between 1250 and 550 BC and the Celtic iron age people filled a pit with sea shells and fish bones.

Dunbeacon Stone Circle

This is the only prehistoric stone circle on the peninsula and fortunately the monument is in a fairly good state of preservation. The stones are usually slab like and it relates more to the circles of the Bantry/Kealkil area than the southern coastal areas.

Copper Mines

The discovery of the early copper mines in the Cork/Kerry region dates back to the industrial mining venture of the late 18th – 19th centuries. The largest concentration of these mines lies on Mt. Gabriel itself, where some 32 copper beds working are preserved in a blanket peat environment. The miners had to work very hard to get the copper from the rock. They lit fires against the rock and left them for many hours, the rock would then be cracked and the copper would be pounded from the rock cobblestone. Over the years the mines were dug into the rock and eventually the mountain became very poor in copper so in the end the mines were dug further along the coast.