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The most satisfying of the 3 monuments in Montiaghroe that we saw today, this roadside, three-stone stone row is hard to miss if you’re in the vicinity, maybe heading for Drumskinney stone circle up the road. The ground around the stones is boggy and is thought to contain more traces of other arrangements. The stones rise in height from SSE to NNW, the tallest over head height and almost huggable. The views are spacious to the east and south, Rotten mountain a prominent rise of the ground to the north-east.
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You could easily give this one a miss and not regret anything. Worryingly, there seems to be even less stones here now than when Nucleus visited 10 years ago. What does remain are 2 stones, one .5 of a metre tall and another, choked and surrounded by a holly tree, 1.4 metres tall. The plans at the NISMR show 4 embedded stones with reports of there having been 6 in the 1940s.
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Killadeas modern church and ancient graveyard is a strange little site on the eastern shores of Lower Lough Erne, about 8 kms north of Enniskillen. There are three peculiarities that may be of interest here, and one that’s definitely not for here, but deserves a mention. This latter is the Bishop’s stone, an eerie, four-sided carved, hunched figure, in relief of one side with a face to the north. It’s the best thing here but alas it’s a no-no.
The other three stones are: a relatively innocuous standing stone; a grave slab with dubious cupmarks on its back side and; probably the only true prehistoric relic, a holed stone, with half the hole embedded in the turf. The main A47 Enniskillen to Kesh road is right over the hedge and this is a fast road but there is space to park a car and access seems to be welcomed with signage and a small pedestrian gate.
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The Movarran Road in Fermanagh heads north-west out of Drumskinney hamlet at the junction of Montiaghroe Road, about 700 metres south-west of the famous stone circle. It bends north in a pine plantation and heads towards the Donegal border. There is the illusion today that nothing much seems to happen in this part of North Fermanagh – a definite backwater of poor and poorly drained land, sheep farming being the mainstay, some better pasture dotted amongst the ever rising sphagnum moss.
We had made our decision to head directly north for Tawnydorragh and to work our way back down south, slightly distracted by the monuments first at Montiaghroe and then at Drumskinney, before making our way to the fringes of the forest that contained our real target. The townland itself is bordered to the north-west by Lettercran townland, Co. Donegal, not 200 metres from the rear of the tomb. However, there’s a kilometre-and-a-half to traverse before reaching there. The Scraghy road in Donegal looks like it could provide closer access, but the Termon river, which is the border, didn’t seem fordable, so we chose the forest entrance on the Movarran road.
The relief to be out again starts to ease into our spirits as we move deeper into the forest. The track heads up north-east for a short while, then north at a t-junction, twisting a bit and bending back north-west again and we spy a fox not 20 feet away in the scraggy grass. He ain’t impressed by us and skulks up towards the treeline for better cover. The track ends and we’re on dodgier ground as we head north again after another t-junction, but we know what we’re after and we pretty much know where it is, thanks to the tech gods, so our pace stays steady and even quickens the closer we get. And yet the trees are now denser, the old photo from the 70s or 80s that I saw at the NISMR that promised views all around useless.
We end up in a gully between two ridges and it’s obvious that the tomb is on one or the other. Wanting it to be on the northern one, where the sun seems to penetrate the pines, proves to be pointless – it’s on the more southerly. We burst through into the clearing from the east to be confronted by what appears to be a pile of hugely moss-covered stones, with the facade of the tomb to its right. This pile turns out to be sawn logs from the three trees were allowed to grow behind the entrance jambs in the first chamber of the gallery. At this time of the year the sun never gets high enough to penetrate the trees surrounding the clearing, but the benefit of being here now is that the growth has died back enough for us to be able to examine the remains. This is an isolated spot and we got the feeling that nobody had been here for a very long time.
The stones of the monument are satisfyingly blocky and imposing. The court was probably of the shallow variety, though only two of its stones now remain. The lintel that covered the two entrance jambs has fallen backwards into the chamber, partially held up by the southern sidestone and the tree stumps. The jambs are nearly a metres and a half tall, leading into a six metre long, two-chambered gallery. All of the southern rear chamber wall is missing – the second stone of the front chamber is weirdly eroded with runnels and wrinkles. The encrustation of the stones with mosses, grass and lichens at first had me confused – what were the stones holding up the lintel doing in the position of blocking the gallery entrance? And then it became clear with a touch – they’re rotting tree stumps, left there to stop the lintel from collapsing fully.
The rear stone of the gallery is gabled, speculated on as pointing to a corbelled roof – I guess I can go along with that – it’s pleasing either way. The atmosphere here is still and quiet, the glade inviting exploration and contemplation, but I can’t help wishing that the trees weren’t there, opening up the views – the old photo, maybe from the eighties, shows how the tomb was built on the prominence/escarpment, with some cairn kerbing visible at the rear, both to the north and south. I mooched in under the pine trees and saw some of this. My mate Thomas went further back there, down to the Termon river, reporting back that the river was in spate – just as well we didn’t try to get here from that invitingly short way. Tawnydorragh is one of those places that demands a certain level of commitment, rewarding the adventurous with a satisfaction that isn’t replicated by the easier, more accessible sites.
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Another Patrick (Patrician) site and another long cairn, scooped out on its longer axis like at the cairn of the cats 2 kilometres to the south-east, only this time a portal tomb, with the main chamber at the east and then two subsidiary, cist-like chambers at the west.
Nestled in a clearing of a pine forest, a monument in state care with a small car park to its south, you get the sense that it’s never going to be high on most peoples’ itineraries, a lonely haven of quiet escape. The northbound track up through the forest is waterlogged and there is a small, forded stream to traverse before the tomb is revealed through the trees.
The cairn heads away eastwards up a slight incline, the two subsidiary chambers at its rear, western end prominent with huge blocky stones. They are both very box-like with no discernible entrance so maybe two cists inserted into the cairn at a later date than the initial construction. It was excavated in 1899 but I’m not sure if the finds were ever carbon-dated in more modern times. Strikingly, the cored remains of the cairn mirror the remains down the road at Carnagat.
25 metres up along the gash in the cairn is a small portal dolmen/chamber. Both portals remain, recessed by about 2 metres from the front facade of the cairn in court tomb fashion. They’re not the most robust portals I’ve ever seen. The northern stone has fallen southwards and rests on the southern stone. Behind them is a large box-like chamber. Presumably there was a capstone over the portals once upon a time, balanced on the sidestones of the very cist-like chamber.
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One that got away the last time we were here, back in July last year. We’d managed to get to Glengesh portal tomb about 800 metres ENE. It’s all rolling reclaimed pasture and fairly marginal land hereabouts, with maybe some tillage. 1.2 kilometres west of here at Kilknock is a small hill with a small cairn, said now to be a wedge tomb, which we’ll have to come back to – our attempts today were blocked by some pretty steep and, in places, marshy ground.
Knockennis court tomb is ruined. It’s 4 fields in from the road, along a farm track with two gates. I guess I was expecting something better, an idea planted erroneously a while back. Anyhow, I’m glad I came, the remains still recognisable as the chamber/s of a megalithic tomb aligned classically north-east/south-west with the possible remains of a court at the north-east end. The drystone field boundary wall that passes through it north to south is unhelpful, but does add a certain ambience. Maybe one for the completists only.
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There are some places that are just humbling, that evaporate the musty, strangling cobwebs of cynicism and arrogance in a barely noticeable instant, unregistered until you’re back home and reflective, all the while they’re working their silent magic, lending you something you only barely realise you needed. This is one of those places.
It seems that the accepted, received wisdom is that this place was once a ‘temple of the druids’ (whatever that means), visited by that most famous Welshman on his full-on conversion therapy trip/tour of our small island, powering through a major enough set for the local denizens to be convinced to re-name the place in his honour.
Nobody ever completely bought it though, temporary temporality so to speak – but that’s to say that those who came before the saint might have known more, or different, which I don’t believe they did. And not because I feel the need to justify the site or not – no, the place is the place before I say anything about it, fine with or without me and my beliefs, or anyone else’s for that matter.
There’s a car-park east of the site at Altdaven Road with a couple of ‘explanatory’ boards. The map is crude but handy. You descend into Altdaven Woods to the west and then down deeper to the north. There’s no rush but anticipation quickens the step. Straight ahead at the bottom and up along the stairs and path through the trees and along the thin south/north ridge. Good fortune had it that the sun was out, penetrating the tree cover in places, the dappled light adding to the sense of mystery. It’s always a bonus when you have a place to yourself, imagination unleashed.
Not quite at the summit is the chair, it’s back to you behind a pair of trees, standing proud and tall and spooky amongst many other outcrops and boulders. It’s not very deep into the woods and the road is visible from the perch, but we could have been on another planet as far as we noticed. Swiftly we were lost in the wonder of the place, clambering here and there and down to the well. It’s quite steep and vertiginous but no matter, the rag tree adds to the magic.
The flat stone of the ‘well’ has more that just the bullaun in its south-west corner – there’s another large cup-mark towards its centre. There are offerings everywhere – little fern covered niches in the side of the ridge with photos of loved ones and mass cards, the rag tree (ignore the covid face-coverings), coins beside the bullaun and the ubiquitous tea-lights. But none of it matters – the place is a delight, an almost semi-tropical, dripping green wonderland. Spellbound we marvelled, for a while anyway before we let ‘reality’ intrude. We could have stayed all day and not met anybody, but we decided not to.
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There’s a couple of plans of this site on the NISMR and combined with the note there, I was expecting something of substance. Alas, what does remain now is almost totally overgrown, even now in January, and impossible to interpret, except for the most southerly stone, said to be a flanker of the south-facing court. Despite that, it was worth coming here, it being one of those barren, wrecked sites that tugs at the heartstrings that you come across regularly and are glad to bear witness to, in the midst of seemingly wilful neglect and ignorance.
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Northbound on the R186 in Monaghan turns into Tyrone and the B83 at Tanderagee and the Fury river and you’d barely notice, only you do. The man with the commercial vehicle sales and service business bang on the border must be jurisdictionally flexible, elastic even. From here, as the crow flies a kilometre west, is the cat’s cairn, Carn na gCat. In rough terrain, horse shit in evidence, but no horses, precious little could have been produced since the bog grew.
But the ancestors were here. And they left us Carn na gCat, an almost symmetrical dual court tomb, embedded in a long cairn much of which remains, two metres tall in places. Partially excavated in 1899, it’s a monument in state care now, care which it seems is not easy to give lately by the looks of the growth – fortunately we’re here in winter, and we have our wellies. The fenced in track down to the site is waterlogged, the courts and chambers still not visible.
Rapidly the fences end and you’re in the court of the cats, the almost perfect north-eastern semi-circle entrance welcoming you in. The two Clontygora-esque shouldered stones flanking the jambs are striking – asymmetrical, but sure why not? But that’s where the asymmetry ends – everything after that seems planned, geometric, mirrored, until you emerge at the south-west end and its less spectacular court. Between the two courts are four chambers each roughly 2.5 metres long, two galleries separated by a gap of about a metre between the two backstones.
The four gaps between the entrance and segmenting jambstones are about the same width and each of the four chambers have four sidestones, two on each side, all pretty symmetrical, but no less satisfying for that. It’s in amazingly good condition, only now a tad overgrown, holly colonising the northern side and I’d say the whole thing might get inundated in summer. Some of the roofstones are laying about on the south-eastern flank of the tomb and there’s no sign of any corbelling – which begs the question: if the distance from the floor to the top of the chamber sidestones is never much over 1.5 metres, were the tombs built by small people, or very large cats?
We mucked about here for quite a while in the watery winter sunshine, our first stop on a quick gallop around South Tyrone and we were enchanted, glad to be back out exploring, discovering, snooping and wondering. It was a great place to start at and is definitely worth a visit, only let’s hope that now things are recovering that the DOE tend to the plants that are in danger of taking over the place.
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A rival for the more widely known Ardristan, it's in a relatively isolated spot on the road to nowhere special. You could take it in after a visit to Haroldstwon, 2.5 kilometres to the south-west. It's not visible from the small road but I accessed it from the west, having fortuitously met the owner who was relaxed about me jumping the gate and having a look.
The base of the stone is quite stout, tapering up to over 2 metres tall and with six grooves. All of the views around the stone are blocked by trees and shrubs so it's hard to tell if there's any alignment. Williamstown fits neatly into the group of North Carlow grooved stones.
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Late evening on the first day of the year and after two disappointments earlier I pulled the car over in the cul-de-sac on the southern flank of Croghan mountain. Twenty metres into the field is this weird looking stone, about 1.4 metres tall and one of those that looks different from every angle. One side of it is incredibly phallic and looks like it has been split vertically down the middle. It's well embedded into the ground but not marked on the OS map and I only found it from scouting the SMR at archaeology.ie – I had a sense that this may be modern and erected as a cattle scratching post.
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It was an overcast day and I had just scouted around the western reaches of Tomduff Hill in a second vain attempt to find some elusive sites in Killoughternane. I’d earlier also failed to find a stone at Kilbrannish North (I think it’s been removed). Passing over the spectacular road south of Croaghaun towards the pass between Mount Leinster and Slievebawn, I reached the car park at The Nine Stones (S817546) and kept going, assured that the cloud threatening to drop and obscure the summit would hold off.
Disappointed at Killoughternane, I headed back around north-east towards the pass only to see the cloud kissing the aerial and dancing about the summit of Mt. Leinster. The Nine Stone car-park is at around the 400 metre contour, the cairn at 795 about 2 kilometres up the service road, so a one-in-five height gain. Not much but it’s getting late and I’d prefer not to be driving home in the dark and the views will be obscured by the time I get to the top. Hmmmmm… I was tempted to drive, but I don’t think that’s allowed.
So off I set, unfit Andy on another venture that you’d probably pass up if you were thinking properly. Some of it is one-in-ten and some of it is one-in-three and the higher you get the steeper the pain, but don’t give up the game until… And that cloud kept dropping and the wind was whipping up, but those views on the way up: north-east over Bunclody towards the southern Wicklow outliers and almost to the sea off Arklow; it’s not too long before you’re looking down on Slievebawn (520m) with its cairn to the north-west; south-west down towards the mountains of Waterford and Tipperary and Slievenamon; and up and up.
Into the cloud with the wind whipping around the massive mast. The cairn is better than I expected, hollowed out in the centre but with some probable/possible orthostatic stones lying thrown about the place. The note in the inventory reckons that the trig builders were probably responsible for the damage. A lot of the cairn stones are larger than in a lot of other similar sites. They could be the remains of a kerb thrown up onto the pile and the footprint of the cairn extends well beyond this pile and is grass-covered further out. There are a few stones that look like the possible roofstones of a chamber or maybe a passage on the southern arc of the cairn.
I can only imagine what the all round views are like from up here, it being the highest spot for miles. Blackstairs mountain (735m) is six-and-a-half kilometres south of here across the Sculloge Gap but there was no sighting it for me on this day. The return jog back down to the car was pleasant, the sun was sinking and the day was done. Google maps said 80 minutes back to my place.
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From the signpost that is used for shotgun target practice all the way to the monument is supposed to be 700 yards, but there’s two additional provisos: follow the posts (many of which are now fallen) and wear good boots. The tomb is on a prominence and the whole of the approach, except for the first hundred yards or so, is boggy. This was the last site of a hectic day, begun at Dun Ruadh, a cairn with a stone circle at its centre, and ending here at Clogherny, a wedge tomb surrounded by a stone circle.
Clogherny, or Meenerrigal, is wild: those 700 yards could be 700 miles. There’s nothing up here but the views, and the tomb, once you get here – no one, no sheep, maybe a hare or two or a deer now and then, and two hare-brained wanderers. This is the real deal. There’s a bit of a track that heads south-west from the signpost where we left the car but it soon runs out as it bends around to the west. There are still some odd posts off in the distance but following them means traversing the bog. There’s no other option.
The last rise before reaching the plateau that contains the monument is a slight slog and then the ground partially dries out (but I’m here in late summer so…). On first sighting it’s immediately apparent that the tomb builders didn’t pick the highest ground around – there’s a couple of higher knolls 300 metres to the south-west. The tomb is not quite aligned onto them, but the place is magnificent, oozing deliberation and reverence.
Anthony Weir says: “the whole monument seems to combine the practices of court tomb, wedge tomb and stone circle building.” Estyn Evans says more or less the same. Davies, the excavator in 1937, says that given its peculiarities “… the monument was conceived as two-chambered, though in so degenerate a form that it is difficult to describe it as anything but a megalithic cist.” A simpler analysis might conclude ‘a classic wedge tomb with a large, uncovered ante-chamber’, surrounded by a stone circle.
It’s thought that the tomb had been messed about with well before being rediscovered by the removal of the peat and possibly happened before the beginning of the growth of the bog, so presumably in the bronze age. The southern, front end is fascinating, with that large ante-chamber and the jambstones looking very cist-like, yet, was it ever covered? And if it had been covered, could it have been the circle builders, presumably later on, that uncovered it?
The addition of the circle, paved with cobbles between the orthostats (not now visible due to plant growth) adds to the dreamlike quality of the site. I couldn’t help but notice the similar ‘feel’ that the place had to that at Dún Ruadh. Maybe I’m getting older and mellower. The western end of the Sperrins with Mullaghcarbatagh and Mullaghclogher three kilometres to the east, dominate the skyline there, but scarcely impact the place. The two rocky knolls to the south are more viable as loci.
The now mud-filled chamber is low and squat. The longer of the two eastern sidestones is falling outwards. Davies says that one western sidestone had fallen inwards and that it had to be reset. The roofstone seems relatively stable, resting on at least four of the stones, including the backstone. It’s almost square except in the north-eastern corner which has a curve taken out of it, almost certainly deliberately. This reminded me of the notch-like feature found in many wedge-tomb backstones.
I could have stayed up here forever. The magic of the circle, even now in its overgrown state, surrounding quite a fantastic tomb and cairn, stay long in the memory. It’s the type of place that empties the spirit of anxieties, lush with wildflowers in early September, the sphagnum moss in abeyance for a short while. Sign-posted, Clogherny Meenerrigal is a must-see site, but do take note of the advice.
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In Burl’s A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland & Brittany, Castledamph is rated (3), Ruined but recognisable – to which I would add: barely. Another site, like at Beaghmore, ‘discovered’ when 2 metres of peat were removed, this time in the late nineteenth century, the excavation report of 1937 and Burl’s book tell of two contiguous rings, 2 concentric rings with a cairn, two alignments, another cairn and possibly two more concentric circles.
I set out off across a pasture field with some hope and anticipation. About 200 metres in the terrain changes to poorer land and I surmounted the fence into the large enclosure with the monuments. This is a relatively accessible area but has the feel of being isolated, sited on a southern spur of the Sperrins with the deep valley of the Glensass Burn to its west rising towards the north into a natural arena. The land is poor and the bog is growing again so it’s really difficult to make anything out now in late summer, rushes higher than even the tallest of stones.
The alignment is recognisable, as are the two contiguous rings, but as I said earlier, barely. I believe I saw some of the stones of the concentric rings but not in any pattern that displayed their form. The scenery is fantastic here and in my clomping exertions about the place my eyes kept getting pulled away, towards the arena-like bowl two kilometres north below Mullaghcarbatagh and west across the valley to Eden Hill and Craigacrom north of it. Castledamph is archaeologically frustrating but has its rewards.
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Probably best visited between the months of November and March when there’s less plant growth to obscure it, this neat little dolmen retains quite a bit of its structure and is possibly quite a charmer. It’s sadly now trapped in a thorny hedge, locked between a country lane and a horrible barbed-wire topped fence. We drove right up to it and didn’t hang around in case the farmer needed access, disappointed at our inability to have a good root around.
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Twenty metes or so east of the portal tomb is this almost completely destroyed tomb. The literature says wedge but I reckon it’s the remains of a two- or three-chambered court tomb, possibly aligned on the deep notch between Mullaghbane and Mullaghbolig at Barnes, south across the Glenelly Valley. The low remains straddle, and are incorporated into, a north-south field boundary, with many stones embedded into the turf, but definitely showing that they are chamber stones from a megalithic tomb and to me, on this day, more interesting than its more famous neighbour. A site that could do with a rescue excavation.
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Interesting roadside site at the eastern end of the beautiful Glenelly Valley. A 9 stone north/south alignment, now corralled into a tight enclosure, with the info board peculiarly placed up in the top, north-western corner. The stones range from 2 metres to .2 of a metre tall with no satisfying single gradual height increase/decrease. That said, it is a delightful arrangement, impossible to not imagine that it was part of some greater complex. But why on such a steep hill?
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It’s been fifteen weeks since my visit to An Bheitheach Mhór (Beitheach Mór), a second visit here in five months. Back in May the torrential rain forced us back to the car after a cursory 5 minutes. It was my mate Paulie’s first time there, my second and it was a complete washout. Now, this last time, it was overcast and we had the place to ourselves, bar the hippy couple making out in their van in the car-park.
I took no fieldnotes. So all I’ve got are memories, and photos. So what do I think of when I think of Beaghmore? Well it’s quite an intimidating prospect. Discussion of stone circles seems to focus on their purpose. In the three times I’ve visited the site I’ve not thought once of ceremony nor ritual. The immediate reaction, at least my own, is one of awe. Twice I’ve had people with me and they’ve been the same. And then, because there’s so much going on, perplexity.
So then when I return to the literature back at home I’m looking for an explanation, one that I don’t seek when I’m there. Which is curious in a way, or not so much if you give it a bit more thought. Because Beaghmore is what it is before you interpret it and all you can do is wander about, dazed and bedazzled and yes, perplexed, but so what?
I know it’s stating the obvious but there’s stones everywhere. In fact Beaghmore is the stoniest of all the stony places I’ve visited (maybe Maeve’s cairn has more stones but you know what I mean). Entering the site from the east it’s all very manicured – immediately inside the fence are two not quite conjoined circles with a small cairn in between. Four splayed alignments rush off to the north-east from either side of the cairn, meeting the boundary you’ve just entered and terminating in a small, cleared green area.
After this initial encounter, your mind, like a kid in a sweetshop, starts to get pulled around the place. Your eyes are drawn further in to the next two almost conjoined ‘circles’ and their not quite tangential alignments and then further still to Circle E whose interior is described by Burl as containing ‘a wilderness of sharpened stones like a fakir’s bed.’ There are many tall stones here in another mad alignment, like the rest of them at Beaghmore seemingly reaching towards the north-east beseechingly.
South of these, and almost separate from them, are two more stone circles and an intriguing barrow-like earthen ring with a cairn at its centre. This cairn, like the other 9 or so at Beaghmore, is small. An alignment here, close to the western stone circle but not quite touching it, heads off in… you guessed it, a north-easterly direction, back towards the ‘main’ part of the complex. Everyone who comments seems to be assured that there’s more to be discovered under the peat in the surrounding fields and I can’t say I disagree.
Whatever its purpose, or ‘meaning’ if you like, Beaghmore is a stone-lovers wonderland, a possible portal into the soul of bronze-age man/woman, if that is what floats your boat. Either way it’s downright trippy, spaced-out and weird in its own right without the need for plant or chemical inducements (though again, whatever floats your boat).
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Ballybriest wedge tomb, the baby brother (sister?) of the better known and more easily accessible court tomb 120 metres or so to its north, is, to my mind, the best of the tombs in the townland. Another wedge tomb once stood 500 metres north-west of here, and now resides, reconstructed, in An Creggan Visitors Centre about 15 kilometres to the south-west in neighbouring Tyrone. Yet another possible wedge tomb once stood the same distance away but closer to the north and has now been destroyed by quarrying. There are also reports of 4 stone circles, various alignments and various cairns, making Ballybriest a rich prehistoric landscape.
All of these monuments were pre-bog constructions. The landscape now is pretty grim – partly-reclaimed pasture on the higher ground, boggy, rushy, swamp lower down, a massive quarry to the east, subsistence supplemented with industrial. The last time I was here up at the court tomb the weather was not untypically bleak, drenching us after 10 minutes, making for a hasty retreat to the car, giving up on attempting the wedge. Today, though overcast, is different – late summer temperate and easygoing.
Like over at nearby Tullybrick the tomb is low and squat, not quite a metre tall. Unlike Tullybrick, most of the chamber is still in situ. Two large roofstones cover a chamber made from large, laterally placed sidestones. A backstone, hidden by undergrowth, seals the rear of the tomb but doesn’t quite reach the covering roofstone, allowing those interested a gawk along the chamber out of the south-west facing entrance.
The entrance has the remains of a facade or maybe even an ante-chamber, two portal-like stones of which are the tallest of the whole construction. This is a really cool wedge tomb, much more satisfying than the court tomb on the prow of the hill to the north, which is no small compliment given how good that is in itself.
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You could almost get bogged down in Beaghmore, 8 kilometres south-west of here – but you couldn’t really because it’s been reclaimed from the bog. I metaphorically did, in the swamp of the mind that stopped me in my tracks as I toured backwards, writing forwards four months ago.
From the circles we crossed the Tyrone/Derry border heading east and north-east through Davagh forest, emerging into heathland and then down into the Moyola River valley. A road leads south-east up out of The Six Towns, wooded for a while then opening out into more patchy, reclaimed terrain. After a kilometre and a half there’s an east-leading concreted track, halfway along which is our target.
We could see the tomb from this track and, after parking in a lay-by, headed north across two empty pasturage fields before reaching the unreclaimed bog. A short hop, skip and jump or so and there it is. Set within quite an amount of cairn is a small, classic, south-west/north-east aligned wedge tomb.
We approached from the east where a large, broken roofstone covers the rear of the tomb – the backstone on which it probably once also rested is now missing. This roofstone is the most prominent feature of the remains, with some southern kerbing and some of the facade at the south-west also fairly visible. The ante-chamber and chamber combined are about 5 metres long and pretty much filled in except under the roofstone.
Again there is much reclamation work in the area. Blanket bog seems to just get stripped away and, unlike in the vast midlands peat-works, doesn’t seem to serve any purpose other than to get down to the old ground which is then used for grazing. So far Tullybrick has survived these depredations, unlike some of the archaeological remains one-and-a-half kilometres south-west in Ballybriest.
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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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