Kenmare Stone Circle View all content for Kenmare

Visited on Friday 18th May , the one really wet day of the week. I have to say unfairly perhaps, that after the remote, mysterious circles, wedge tombs and standing stones situated on mountain sides, often in peat bogs almost always facing towards the sea – this stone circle was an anti-climax. Near the centre of the town of Kenmare (Ceann Mara - the head of the sea) it is the largest and most well preserved circle in the south-west measuring about 17 metres in diameter with 15 uprights and a large boulder dolmen at the centre. Boulder dolmens are rarely found outside south-western Ireland and are thought to be ‘memorials set above burials rather than formal chambers intended as receptacles for burial deposits’ (quote:* Sean O’Nuallain). The local information leaflet says that this bears some relationship to Stonehenge. When Julian Cope visited in 2002 he describes it thus “ in their current state these stones remind the traveller of a fussy, ersatz and over-presented garden centre feature … “ Nicknamed the Shrubberies by the locals and ten years on - fast growing conifers have been planted completely enclosing it. And yet, and yet ... as the disappointment settles over you, you know the Caha Mountains are there though cannot been seen because of the plantings; you can hear, though cannot see, a rushing river nearby. Give this stone circle back to Nature and the ‘sense of place’ recently discussed on the forum would be there in abundance. *from: “Stone Circles, Stone Rows, Boulder-Burials and Standing Stones”

Posted by tjj 31st May 2012ce

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