Showing 1-20 of 154 fieldnotes. Most recent first | Next 20 
Two court tombs, back to back but 5 metres apart, unlike Aghanaglack, a dual court tomb with only a stone separating the galleries. This place is all about place. Yes there's the tombs, the northern one of which is like no other, but it's where they're at is where it's at.
From Manorhamilton, a 5 minute drive to a gate, and a further minute along a track at the side of some forestry and it all opens up. The track remains drivable past the tombs but I parked just before and above them. Wild Irish peatland, in places eroded down to the limestone pavement, and views for miles all around. Benbo to the west is dominant, north-west into Sligo you can see Truskmore and Tievebaun. The plateau that you're on rises to the south and it looks bleak in that direction forever.
I had to come here after reading Anthony Weir's description of the tombs. It was their situation that captivated me however. The wrecks of both tombs take patience to work out. Weir says 2 chambers in the main gallery with 6 subsidiary chambers set into the cairn at the back of the northern tomb.
The southern tomb is less complex with a 2-chambered gallery. Both tombs have some remains of their courts.
I spent most of my time here just wandering about the area, over towards the old farmhouse, marvelling at the formations of the limestone, parts of which are crowned with half a metre of peat. At the end of it all I didn't want to leave. A great spot to camp out in I'd say, though pegging the tent down might be difficult in this terrain. Wonderful place.
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A stone pair, looking like a classic male/female combination, the male of which is now falling over like some aul-fella, held up by a small group of trees. The female is a blocky obelisk. I couldn't get closer due to the river but both stones are close to 2 metres high.
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I was in the area and had to stop by to one of my favourite sites in Ireland. I'd been using Anthony Weir's Early Ireland – A Field Guide and Estyn Evans's Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland – A Guide and both mention that the site is important and may well date back to the mesolithic. Leaving that to one side, this much later stone deserves some sort of care and attention. I hadn't planned on coming here and wished I'd brought some secateurs. No-one in authority seems to care for these stones. There were offerings in each of the bullauns under the cursing stones. Fair enough – maybe it's left to us to clean up the site, those who believe that these places are worth looking after. Alas, these stones are on private land and I'm not qualified to caretake them. I wish I lived closer to here.
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The Donegal inventory has this as unclassifed, gives the wrong co-ordinates and has a description that I can't recognise from what I saw. So maybe I was at the wrong place – well, not according to the OS map, Sheet 17.
There are 3 remaining stones that have the character of stones used in portal tombs but they could be the remains of one of the other classifications. I was on my way somewhere else when I stopped by here.
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There are 5 megalithic tombs marked on OS sheet 16 in this part of north county Leitrim, all within a distance of 300 metres of each other, so I believe this merits the megalithic cemetery tag. I don't have the Leitrim Inventory so I'm guessing on 2 of the tombs, one I couldn't get close to, the other having very scant remains. By my estimation there are 3 wedges and 2 courts.
(It's worth mentioning that a local archaeologist told me that there may be more tombs in the vicinity and that I could see other tomb-like structures from a distance but didn't brave the bullocks in the fields)
Tomb 1 is the best preserved, a Burren-esque wedge tomb. Tomb 2 is what I believe to be a very ruined and overgrown court tomb. 3 is a collapsed Burren-esque wedge, 4 a reasonably preserved court (I couldn't get close but its gallery seems to be extant) and 5 a very ruined wedge.
I didn't stick around very long as the usual unfriendly Beware of the Bull(shit) sign was up.
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I was driving along here on my way to look for the court tomb up the road when I spotted this. Now I like a good rath so I do, but this deserves more than the regular small red circle that marks it on OS sheet 16. Given that they are the most common Irish monument (there are probably about 300 on sheet 16 alone), you could tend to ignore them – they're everywhere. This might be a costly mistake however – places like this what I presume to be a multivallate, iron-age ringfort/cashel/rath, are well worth stopping for and are quite spectacular.
The presence of Benwiskin can't be ignored here. It rises up to a not huge height of 514 metres, but does so in rapid time – no gentle rolling hills here – you get vertigo just looking up at the sheep on the 450 metre line.
The fort is a mixture of earthen embankments and dry-stone walls, quite crude in comparison to say Staigue, but much disturbance has occurred here over time. There is a ramp-like approach on the south-west side that circles around the circular fort, visible from the road, but it was hard to make out the entrance in the short time I spent here. Inside the fort itself are many collections of rubble, but as I said I didn't give this place as much time as it deserves. Will I ever return? I'd love to.
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At the base of a belltower, in a modern churchyard in Ballaghnatrillick (Béal Átha an Trí Liag). If it were a cube, it would be approx a metre cubed, if you know what I mean. The bullaun is centrally placed, 15cms diameter and I don't know how deep as it was filled with rubble, seemingly deliberately.
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Marked as a cashel and bullaun stone on archaeology.ie, I could find very little here due to the summer vegetation. Was this occupied by the people who smelted their iron in the court of the tomb up the road? We'll probably never know. :-)
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What an amazing place! Promonotory forts are places I'd usually bypass, and I hadn't planned on going this direction until I was recommended both here, and Cloghcor portal tomb where I'd been earlier, by Martin and Joyce Enright.
Inside the fortifications in a mild gale I couldn't help but wonder at the competition and violence that forced the inhabitants to build this godforsaken fort to make their last stand.
The smallish fort itself is protected to its east by the 57 metre high hill of Knocklane. There is a narrow strip on its north side that allows easy access to the fort. South of the hill would be inaccessible to invaders except by sea and the peak of the hill itself must have been used as a lookout post.
The first (or second last) line of defence is a double ditch, split nearly in half by a causeway. The inner, deeper ditch, is about 4 metres from bottom to top. Either side of the fort are cliffs, though as with the hill, the south would have been much harder to penetrate, hence the building of a bank/wall on the north side.
Between here and the last line of defence there are many signs of habitation structures. And then come the mounds of the final last stand. After here there's nothing save a few metres of ground and then death.
A site that really caught my imagination.
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On land owned by Leo Leyden, a farmer more interested in archaeology than farming (according to his friend Martin Enright), this, though ruined, is well worth visiting. The massive portal stones, both over 2 metres high, remain upright, with the rest of the stones collapsed onto the chamber.
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I couldn't get close to this due to livestock in the field but there seems to be quite a bit of the structure left. According to Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Vol V, County Sligo, it's a "… small example of the central-court type."
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Heapstown is not as roadside a cairn as I had expected from previous reading. It's close to the road but you'll need to enter the field with the Sligo Heritage signpost and approach the cairn from there.
Heapstown brought to mind the 3 other cairns of similar size that I've visited: Ballymacgibbon, Knocknarea (Maeve's Cairn) and Cairn D on Carnbane west in Loughcrew. Most every mention of Heapstown includes the probability of it being a passage grave, but given the Cairn D experience, and the fact that the stolen material mentioned by Gladman has so far revealed no signs of a passage entrance, I'd say the possibility is way less than 50 50.
This is a massive construction though. The kerbstones on south-east side are impressive, bulky and robust and a major job to erect in themselves. The pile of the cairn must contain the field-clearance of 100 acres or more.
I'd love to see this monument opened up a bit, some of the vegetation cut back, revealing it in all its grandeur.
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Right by the side of the N4 Dublin to Sligo road, about 5 kms southeast of Carrick-on-Shannon.
A small crannog, approx 10 metres in diameter and about double that distance from the shore.
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At the side of the (newly widened) road in Ballinascorney, I've passed this umpteen times and never recognised it. It's quite hard to spot, but very distinct when you do. From bottom of fosse to top of mound is maybe a foot, and the bank is quite clearly visible too. It's very circular and maybe 8 metres in diameter, though cut into on the side closest to the road. I would call this a disc barrow or a ring barrow (as it is called in Monumental About Prehistoric Dublin by Tom Fourwinds, from whence I got my directions).
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In the grounds of Tallaght Priory, beside the Friar's Walk, you will need to get permission to visit these stones.
I was surprised by the size of the bullaun stone having only seen close-up photographs with no idea of scale. It's an irregular shape conglomerate, maybe roughly two thirds of a metre squarish. The bullaun is about 20 cms wide and 15 cms deep.
Beside it is a stone described by Patrick Healy in All Roads Lead to Tallaght (South Dublin Libraries) as: "…a large granite stone with a hole through it. The hole is narrower at the ends and in the middle, somewhat like an hourglass, but is now screw-threaded as stated by O'Curry. Beside the hole is a round hollow."
I was kindly brought here by Brother Michael. Thanks.
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This mini-Beaghmore is simply marked as stone circles on the OS map. Burl says that there are 5 circles here in all (wish I had read the book before I set out), 2 of which are immediately apparent 100 metres over the gate and into the field. These are the only 2 that I saw today, not knowing that there were 3 more in the vicinity.
Like at Beaghmore, all the stones of the circles are low, none over half a metre tall. Burl says the northern has 10 stones and the southern 14. The metre and a half tall standing stone is offset to the east.
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The best site on the Burren, bar none. I arrived there at 6.30pm on the 2nd last day of August, a miserable, misty, gloam-laden Clare evening. There wasn't a sinner in sight, the last of the tourists back in their ranches long ago, so having the place to myself was a treat.
The 1km walk from the road is relatively easy going until the final push to surmount the plateau where the fort is situated. You've already descended into the ravine that protects the southern side of the fort only to have to ascend what is probably the easy approach, now and back when the fort was in use.
It's handy to have a look at Hencken's plans of the place before getting there. I think if I ever go back, which I'd like to do, soon, I'll photocopy and laminate these as they really are detailed and expansive. Standing on the viewing platform, having traversed the decking that follows the outer wall from south to east, I could have done with a bit of a guide. But then my attention was pulled to the ravine, the yawning maw that made this place particularly defensible. Hencken found 2 souterrains, both of which led down to exits in the wall of the cliff here. Without his plan to hand I couldn't make out where these are.
The rain started to teem down so I gave the inner enclosure only a very cursory scout. The walls are still impressive and don't seem to be overy restored. What with all the summer growth, it's not so easy to make out the remains of the outer structures of this tri-vallate fort. By now I was soaked to the skin, one of those 'from the outside in and the inside out', so I beat a retreat to the car, defeated by Cahercommaun and its splendour.
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This is well worth the short diversion off the Galway road. I was in the vicinity looking for Toorclogher megalithic tomb (again, without any luck, again) and pulled over to have a look at the modern christian cross. Just behind this is the souterrain entrance. What a pleasant surprise! It's quite well preserved, the opening in the mound leading into a corbelled chamber. From there a tunnel leads down. Where that leads to is anyone's guess, I hadn't got the bottle, or a torch, to check.
So, a souterrain in a mound, that's at one end of a hill in a parish called Seefin. Hmmm.
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I was accompanied down to these stones by Richard Moody, the son of the landowner, an enthusiastic youngfella with a pride about the antiquities on his dad's land. Thanks Richard!
Seeing them elsewhere on the net hadn't prepared me for the size of the stones. The 3 basin bullaun is huge and the single at the back of the copse is bulky. Richard said that his dad plants a tree down here every once in a while and that the site used to be a monastery. I'd been over at Brittas earlier where mother nature is beginning to swallow the important bullauns there – it was good to see that these are in good hands in their own protected little area.
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Set just slightly south-west of the peak of a ridged hill this artificial mound is well worth checking out. From the top of the mound there are extensive views to the west, north-east to Saggart Hill and Slievethoul, Seefin, Seefingan and Seahan, east over the Wicklow mountains and Poulaphouca reservoir and south towards Carlow.
The main focus seem to be towards the west but that could be because the eastern views are partially blocked by the modern hedgerow. The mound rises to about 2 and a half metres. It's been dug out at the top. There is a lone stone embedded into the north side of the mound, a peculiarity that gets you wondering.
Access is easy up the public footpath from the Rathmore to Blessington road.
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Showing 1-20 of 154 fieldnotes. Most recent first | Next 20 |
Taxi-driving, graphic artist with a penchant for high hills and low boulders. Currently residing in Tallaght where I can escape to the wildernesses of Wicklow within 10 minutes.
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