I have visited this site several times in the last year and is relatively easy to find from the closest road if you have a GPS enabled OS map app for your phone, it is only 100m or so into the forest which is not as dark as it first seems (the map location of the cairn is very accurate despite it being in thick forest).
As previously noted the ground is usually very damp, so appropriate footwear is essential.
A warning to those like myself who have difficulty in interpreting OS maps or are basically a bit thick about following directions. In the heading this site is said to be also known as ‘Piskie House’. On the OS map the name ‘Piskie House’ appears next to Sheepstor itself whereas the circle is described simply as ‘cairn circles’. This misled me into thinking that what I was looking for was right next to Sheepstor despite the contrary visual evidence of the photos posted and what others have said in their fieldnotes. I wasted a good hour fruitlessly searching for it in the wrong place, having walked within about 30 yards of it at one point whilst looking in the opposite direction. I can’t find it being named ‘Piskie House’ in any other book I’ve got. Burl makes it clear that refers to ‘a long narrow cave concealed under a granite overhang’.
Anyway, I found it in the end and can happily echo all that others have said about this site.
Visited July 2014
Not much more to add to the fieldnotes below. Very neglected round barrow with rabbit burrows on one side. Center clearly dug into with no attempt to repair. Barrow made up of stones and loose earth. On an old O.S. map of the area, two tumuli are marked, the other being further down the hill, next to the road, but this is not recorded on pastscape or the later O.S. maps.
Visited July 2014
This is a classic drive-by TMA site. Again, the site has not been documented as being a Bronze Age bowl barrow as it appears to never have been excavated. Whatever it is, it is strange. I defiantly got a vibe of “who are you?” when I started walking on top of it. This mound is right next to a gate into an arable field and could just be a pile of soil but why would anyone leave it positioned where it is such an obstacle? I took a few pictures as I moved around it and it looks like a round barrow that has been added to. From some angles it is a convincing bowl barrow, but the side nearest the road and gate look like they have been a later addition. The top of the mound has been elongated and is now flat. There looked like a hollow to the south west where soil had been scoped out of the field, maybe to add to the mound. I could feel a slight ditch under my feet on the north and east sections but nothing on the west or south, nearest the road.
Pastscape seem undecided as to it being a windmill mound but there seem to be better locations to build a windmill further up the hill. The road next to the barrow is classified as Roman and links to the Watling Street. This road is defiantly ancient and judging by the about of small ponds either side of it, was a drovers road or some form of animal rearing area. Whether this was pre or post medieval is debatable.
There are/where several barrows close to this site. As these were dug into at a time when scientific investigation techniques where undefined, the results from such digs are inconclusive. Some sites appear to have been reused in the pagan Saxon period, while others have simply been classified a Saxon in origin. There is clear evidence that the area was cultivated or used during the Neolithic, so this could easily be a Bronze Age bowl barrow built by the proceeding generations. Once again, modern excavation is required to answer the questions posed by sites like this, and as that is money driven, we will probably never find out.
Fenny Drayton church is worth visiting and the village, then known as Drayton-in-the-Clay, was also the birth place of George Fox, founder of the Quakers, so, uh ...... hats off to him, “Thou seest how young people go together into vanity, and old people into the earth; thou must forsake all, young and old, keep out of all, and be as a stranger unto all.”
Visited July 2014
Naming this Peckleton barrow rather than Kirkby Mallory was a mistake, as it is nearer the later and a stones’ throw from the racetrack of Mallory Park.
It seems that although this site looks and feels like a barrow, it has never been excavated and so no datable artifacts have been recovered. Regardless of this, someone decided to plant around the site with oak trees as a foam of protection against being ploughed up and this has preserved what remains to this day. A footpath runs right next to the site and on my visit, this path had been re-positioned to run through a glorious potato crop. Maybe the trees were planted when the field changed from being pasture to arable. Whatever the reason, this site looks secure against modern man.
The barrow was covered with nettles but I moved over the top looking for any signs of excavation or intrusion, although it looked clear. There seemed to be a rounded crown to the top and a slight ditch was visible between the oak trees. The back of the barrow sat next to a hedge, but this had been planted well away from the ditch outline which made me think the barrow pre-dated the hedge line. It certainly looked like a barrow rather than a heap of rubble and soil that had been dumped in a field. Currishly the footpath is shown on the O.S. map as passing the barrow on the east, but now it passes on the west.
In conclusion I’d say yes to it being a barrow, for size, position, and the general ambiance of the site. Not that spectacular but who knows what secrets this site may reveal if properly excavated.
Visited July 2014
Made a point of checking out these two barrows as they were the only ones in the area that had officially been declared “round barrows” rather than “mounds”. It would seem they only got to be officially recorded because they were dug into by Sir John Evans in 1851 and an artifact ended up in the Ashmolean.
Willful neglect seems to be the order of the day around these parts when it comes to antiquates, a local tradition that lives on into the present day.
Of the two barrows, the one furthest north at SK 41410079 is barley there. I could just make out a slight dome in the crop height after standing on a gate and looking over the field. I guess the trees around the mound were felled and the whole site ploughed level. Maybe you can see more when the crop is cut but not at this time of the season. It did make a perfect placement for a barrow and the drovers track (a gated road) that runs between the two barrows felt old, although the Romans are credited with most of the roads around here.
The second barrow is in the garden of the old vicarage. I read somewhere that Sir John Evans was the local vicar in 1851 which was probably why he dug into the barrow in the first place. From the lane, you can’t see much of this except mature trees and a high hedge. A gate is placed next to the barrow but access is private. The lane seems to have been widened at some time, with the side of the barrow and ditch being cut into. Again, unless you knew where to look and from what angle, this site is well hidden.
I decided to chance my luck and made enquires to a guy on the front driveway in a large motor home. Initially he seemed a bit hesitant, saying the lady of the house would be back in an hour, but I persisted in my request to photograph the barrow and after checking with the kids playing in the garden, he allowed me access. I walked around the barrow taking pictures and asking the kids what they knew of the site. The side nearest the house had been utilized as an Anderson shelter in WWII but positioned as not to destroy the barrow itself. (Nothing on Pastscape about this addition). I remarked about spirits, but they seemed quiet happy and proud to have this barrow in the back garden. This monument survives well and had a contented vibe about it, which is far more than can said of some of the antiquities in the area.
Hardly worth a visit in itself, but maybe for the drive-by TMA types after visiting the Bosworth Battlefield or Bosworth country park.
Visited: July 12, 2014
With this visit to Hunebed D52 Diever, I completed my round of all 53 hunebedden still standing in the Dutch provinces of Drenthe and Groningen. D52 consists of 14 sidestones with two closing endstones, and of the original seven capstones, six are still present, three still supported on their sidestones, the other three having slipped between theirs. Only a single entranceway stone has endured and the position of the missing one is indicated by a marker slab. There is no evidence that this dolmen ever possessed a circle of kerbstones.
At the time of his original 1918 investigation, archaeologist A E van Giffen found the hunebed in total disrepair, the stones so badly scattered that the site scarcely deserved to be described as a hunebed. Much later, in 1953/54, Van Giffen returned to restore D52, but modern archaeologists have doubts about the accuracy of his work. Van Giffen was in fact unable to determine the exact function of six of the stones, nor could he be certain of the original number of sidestones. In the event, the 14 sidestones we see today were placed upright and secured in position, and capstones added to create an almost complete hunebed. However, the result may be due more to guesswork than responsible restoration.
To visit Hunebed D52, I took the No 20 bus from Meppel station to the Kasteel bus halt in Diever. For the final 3 kilometres, it is necessary to change to another No 20 bus (travelling in the opposite direction—towards Meppel) that you will find waiting for you at Dieverbrug Bus Station. A few metres along Kasteel—the first road on the right past the bus halt—turn left along Gronigerweg, which alternates between footpath and cycle path. Continue for 750 metres till you reach a plantation of woodland on the left side of the path. D52 lies here, slightly back from the path.
So after 11 years, I finally managed to get here to check out Moey’s find.
I took the long walk from the north end of the beach, passing the old lime kilns that are half fallen into the sea, so I would be able to have a gander at the other stretches of rock, and none of them had the rings. The rings themselves are on a fairly small patch of rocks, and looking at my photos, I’m not sure I found exactly the same ones as Moey, but it was definitely the same patch of rocks. Perhaps over the last decade, sand has shifted, or seaweed covered/uncovered some of the rings.
It’s got to be a fairly slim chance that these things inspired the creators of the CnRs in the area, as the seashore would have been a lot further out back then, but hey, if there are such rings here, maybe there were others which are now much further out.
That still doesn’t explain the ones to be found further afield, but I would like to think that the CnR carvers might have seen natural structures like these and incorporated them into the mythos of the rings.
Hunebed G5 Heveskesklooster
The story of the Dutch hunebedden took an amazing twist in 1982 when a long-forgotten hunebed was discovered under a mound known as Heveskesklooster on the outskirts of Delfzijl in Groningen Province (red marker on map below). Until it was destroyed in 1586, during the Eighty-Years War, a monastery (klooster in Dutch) stood here, hence the name.
The remains of the monastery were undergoing archaeological investigation prior to expansion of an adjacent industrial development when, unexpectedly and totally by accident, a megalithic stone tomb was located in the subsurface of the mound, covered by two metres of clay. When the crypt and the sandy soil below it were examined carefully, the excavators discovered a partly destroyed hunebed with seven sidestones and three capstones. This turned out to be a unique type of hunebed: there was only one endstone, and the entrance, instead of lying on a long side of the grave, lay at one end.
The stones were removed and reconstructed in the Delfzijl MuzeeAquairium (blue marker). It costs €8.00 to enter the building, which offers much more than an aquarium: there are also major exhibits devoted to archaeology, geology, sea-shells, the fishing industry and shipping in addition to the sea aquarium itself—so great value for money.
This hunebed is officially named as G5 because sites of three long-vanished hunebedden (G2, G3 and G4) had previously been established by archaeologists.
There is an illustrated account (in Dutch), but with many photographic illustrations, of the excavations at Heveskesklooster here.
Visited: July 12, 2014
Just 150 metres from D53, on the other side of the sandy road, lies another passage grave, Hunebed D54 Havelte. Slightly smaller than its twin, with a length of 12.7 metres, D54 consists of six capstones supported on a complete set of 14 sidestones. An original seventh capstone is missing from the eastern end of the hunebed, as is its supporting end stone. There is an incomplete entrance portal, but no evidence for there ever having been a circle of kerbstones. Unlike D53, D54 has never been scientifically excavated.
You can view a short YouTube video about Hunebed D54 Havelte.
Visited: July 12, 2014
If you want to be impressed, then this hunebed on the northern outskirts of the village of Havelte is the place to go. Hunebed D53 Havelte is second only to D27 Borger in size, with a length of 18.9 metres. The grave chamber is complete, with nine capstones resting upon 23 side stones and two endstones; and there is a beautiful entrance portal with its capstone resting on four sidestones. This hunebed still retains ten of its original 40 kerbstones. Unlike the hunebed at Borger, however, which is heavily shaded by mature trees, D53 stands in open heathland, and presents an imposing spectacle from all directions (as well as an impromptu climbing frame for the younger generation).
D53 was thoroughly excavated by archaeologist A E van Giffen as long ago as 1918, when thousands of potshards were unearthed from beneath the floor of the burial chamber, the remains of some 665 items of pottery. Additional finds included three flint axes, an arrowhead, a hammer and beads of jet and amber.
If you are travelling to Havelte from the direction of Meppel (the nearest sizeable town), follow the N353 (Van Helomaweg) which skirts the west of Havelte, following signs to Vlinderparadijs (a display centre for exotic butterflies). Continue past Vlinderparadijs in a generally northward direction for about 800 metres till you encounter a cafe, Theehuis ‘t Hunebed, on the left hand side of the road. Almost immediately opposite is Hunebeddenweg. Follow this road and D53 will come into view after a 200 metre walk.
You can view a short YouTube video about Hunebed D53 Havelte.
In Toor townland and neighbouring (to the east) Lugglass Upper, in a little glen north-east of the peak of Church mountain and almost directly north of Corriebracks, up through sheepy fields, surrounded by stones and mounds that could be, may be, a very neolithic environment vibe to it, there is this group of monuments.
This first part of the track is drivable but behind a farm gate. Just keep going up this track, stay undistracted by the banks, clumps, maybe fallen menhirs – keep going. I had the, as it turned out, fantasy that I might head up to the peak of Church mountain and over to some monuments on its western side – laughable notion in this heat.
After a while you come to another farm gate, directly ahead, not off to the left at the farmhouse where the standing stone is. Over this and about 100 metres in you must ascend the bank to your right. Up here on a flat, boggy plain, are the two stone circles and the henge.
The whole area is like a vast theatre gallery, with the gap between Slievecorragh and Church mountain the proscenium arch. Through here, way off in the distance to the north-west, there is one hill that pulls the attention of the observer, the Hill of Allen, full of Fionn MacCumhaill folklore. It really is quite a distance away, but on a clear day like the day I was there, it seems to float above the plain of Kildare, calling to the observer, attention seeking, and the star of the multi-faceted display up here.
At this, the southern stone circle, the flat face of the southern-most stone faces inwards, a big boulder; the next one on the arc towards the west is nondescript but again has its flat, shaped face facing inwards, today with the jawbone of a sheep on top and a sheep’s skull nearby. The westernmost stone leans in, again with the flat face facing inwards. The northernmost stone leans out, it’s flat face facing outwards. I think there may have been a sixth stone at one point.
The most eastern stone is almost buried, barely peeping out above the heather-covered peat. The interior is artificially flattened and again, it’s hard not to believe that there wasn’t another stone between the easternmost and northernmost stones, as that would suit the geometry of the place, but that sort of speculation can only lead one down to path to yet further contemplation of many more stones. In and of itself, this little known and small in stature circle is very near perfect.
Sitting here writing these notes I’m getting the yen to go back there already. As with all of the other sites here, the views are great, north-east towards Mullaghcleevaun, over the reservoir at Ballyknockan towards Sorrel Hill, again north-west through the gap towards the Hill of Allen. Sphagnum moss continues to grow in the interior and winter up here would be wellies’ terrain.
This is a newly discovered panel of cup-marks in Ireland and the first confirmed panel of rock-art in the Tipperary and also for a large area in every direction (approximately 80km2).
It is adjacent to a standing stone pair and a large bowl barrow. On a previous visit to the stone pair in 2005, the rock outcrop was covered with grass. However on a visit in March 2014 the grass covering had been eroded away and it was immediately clear that the stone was cup-marked. It was also noted that there were similar cup-marks on the eastern stone of the nearby stone pair. There are expansive views to the west (where Lough Derg is located) and also to the south-west, south and south-east.
To the north the view is limited by rising ground. The hill of Laghtea to the south-west seems to
dominate the landscape from the cup marked panel and this hill was identified as the location of a hill-fort by Tom Condit in 1995. Unusually there are no views of Lough Derg from the panel.
Funnily enough I remember posting here on TMA about possible cup-marks on the standing stone.
From the parking place directly south of the summit of Sorrel, on the road that comes up from Lackan, a track begins heading north that will bring you to the top. The path has been eroded/created by hillwalkers, a not very numerous bunch, but enough to wear away the ground. As I ascended I appreciated for the first time the majestic sweep of the curve created by the ridge of hills beginning at Sally Gap and Carrigvore and containing east to west Gravale, Duff Hill, Mullaghcleevaun east and west and Black Hill with Moanbane and Silsean over its back. North of here, but hidden by Sorrel itself, are Kippure, Seefingan and Seefin, Corrig and Seahan.
All over this side of Sorrel are many deep cut trenches into the peat, relics of turf-cutting, and as I ascend there are a few little stone structures that could be something, could be nothing. Further up, Tonduff appears through the Sally Gap and then Kippure. More trenches up here and one can’t help but wonder at the toil involved this high up – desperate times – though once the work was done, bringing it home was an easier downhill trek.
The summit of Sorrel is a flat, rubble-strewn wasteland of granite and sand, eroded, like the cairn it contains, by wind, rain and humanity. The view to the north really opens up now, and south-west over the reservoir are Slievecorragh, Church mountain and Corriebracks.
The cairn is wrecked, with people removing the lower stones and placing them atop, creating a different shaped structure with two distinct aspects. A lot of the exposed rubble consists of larger than normal boulders, leading one to think that much of the smaller covering material is now gone, revealing this more robust core. And it’s quite small, maybe 10 metres in diameter, looking bigger from a distance as it’s higher than normal with all the interference.
There is the sensation that you are at the centre of a bowl up here, with just the gap to the west and the reservoir, but directly west and lower is Lugnagun, with its tomb and cairn, compensating for the gap and furthering the illusion. The ridge that skirts the N81 at Kilteel, from Blessington to Slievethoul, closes the north-west view. There is a slight parallel here with the ring around Slieve Gullion and Calliagh Berra’s House.
The descent back down to the car is easy, the spring in your step aided by the new layers of sphagnum moss and the orchestra of chirping birds. There are other secrets on Sorrel Hill, but they’re for another day.
This site is marked down on the map simply as homestead, which I thought would have meant it was medieval or later, but Coflein confirms that it is prehistoric. So that’s any where from late iron age to half a million BC, it’s probably late iron age....... probably.
I would have had a look around before now if I’d known it’s age, but that homestead appellation threw me off it’s scent.
Alken and I were en route from Carnedd y Saeson back to the car park when from out of the mists came this circular-ish enclosure. It was obviously man made and old, so we hung around a bit taking photos. There was at least three dwelling places with in the enclosure, some big stones mark the entrance to the houses. The north facing entrance is clear and either side has much walling material.
Quite a good site, a walk up Foel Dduarth would present a very good place to look down on it, coflein has some good aerial photos.
Slightly clearer view of find from 2009 and the most photogenic (eventually ) of three new finds from yesterday .
Access to this is simple, 250 metres or so up a hillwalkers track at O125205 on the left-hand side of as you travel south on Military Road in the Featherbeds. For this reason I’ve been here many times, but never wrote about it until now.
Off the track about 5 metres into the peat is this wonderful stone, the connective evidence between bullauns and prehistory. There’s nowt else close by, the nearest early christian site about a mile below at St. Anne’s in the Glenasmole valley. Others have noticed an alignment here.
The stone is a big lump of granite, like a beached walrus, with 3 bullauns, 2 of which breach the south-east end. One of these two could scarcely be called a bullaun as it’s just a carved curve into the stone, but the density of the stone is very porous and all three basins seem to have eroded, and enlarged, over time.
Strangely enough, this stone is not marked on OS sheet 50, but is on archaeology.ie. I was first brought here by Fourwinds about 8 years ago.
Dublin City University have recently modernised and expanded their sporting facilities. There is an entrance on the Ballymun Road, just after the petrol station on your left as you travel north. Through here and around the back of the all-weather GAA pitch is the Poor Clares Convent. At the back of this is the mound.
I’m really surprised that the opportunity to excavate this site wasn’t taken before or during all the groundwork that happened recently. At the very least they could have cut down the sycamores that have colonised the mound, but that’s just me being selfish, wanting to open up this bit of urban prehistory.
Very hard to make out what’s under all the vegetation so I’ve added the SMR entry below. The height could lead one to speculate that it’s a Norman motte, but the diameter’s only 15 metres, so a tad too small for one of those. Great that this still survives amongst all the urban sprawl, though really only one for the completists.
My memory takes me back to 1972 and I have just queued up with my family for what seems a lifetime on a drab day outside the British Museum. We have just managed to get into the room where the treasures of Tutankhamun are on show and I am finally in front of the famous death mask taking in the awesomeness of it all, when an over zealous mother elbows me out of the way and thrusts her own children forward, the brief vision now fading away in a milieu of struggling families. Goodness, it was like a rugby scrum in there!
Forty two years later I’m walking around the top of Beacon Hill towards the grave of Lord Carnarvon, sponsor of Howard Carter’s 1922 excavation in the Valley of the Kings. It’s a beautiful day and being a Monday there’s hardly a soul about, just the ever present hum of the A34 a long way below me. The last time I came up here must have been before 1972 when my parents would bring us here for a Sunday afternoon runabout and tell us about the Tutankhamun stories. It’s all pretty much as I remember it, the grave surrounded by railings, the view to Highclere Castle, the stout earthworks of the hill fort, the wild flowers and butterflies and the singing of skylarks above. In fact the only thing that has changed is the A34 which must have been a very quiet affair pre-1972. It’s the A34 that got me back here as well, having travelled up and down it on numerous occasions, always strongly aware of the hill’s presence, but it was always a case of ‘in too much of a hurry, not the right weather or nobody else in the car wanting to do the mammoth climb to the top’. Well today is my day and all the conditions are spot on.
Visited: July 11, 2014
This hunebed, the northernmost in Drenthe, lies just south of the village of Roden and close to the hamlet that gives it its name: Steenbergen. Hunebed D1 Steenbergen is a sizeable hunebed, and particularly impressive because it has not suffered stone-robbing over the millennia like so many of the others. The full complement of 12 sidestones with six capstones in place, two endstones and a fine entrance portal are all plain to see.
Standing diagonally on a low sand hill, D1 is located in an attractive, woodland tourist area about 150 metres from a car park adjacent to the main road (Hoofdweg) leading north from the hamlet of Steenbergen.
When originally surveyed by A E van Giffen in 1918, this hunebed was in ruinous condition. All the capstones had fallen from their supports and one was broken into five pieces. In a 1953 restoration project, the broken stone was repaired, partly fallen sidestones were re-erected, and all the capstones were reinstated on their supports. Several times since, the portal capstone has had to be replaced after being pushed from its supports by vandals.
In March 1997, the dolmen was severely damaged by arson, which resulted in capstone No 2 being split into a considerable number of fragments. The damage was repaired as well as possible by means of steel pins and epoxy resin, and the stone was replaced on the hunebed on July 21, 1997.
If visiting D1 Steenbergen by car, head north from the centre of the hamlet of Steenbergen along Hoofdweg for about 400 metres until you enter woodland. About 50 metres farther on you will encounter the ‘car park’ sign (red route). A short walk to the northwest, along a sandy road, brings you to the hunebed (blue marker).
If travelling by bus, take the No 83 from Assen (or Groningen) and alight at the ‘Alteveer, Markeweg’ halt. In the corner of the field at this junction you will see a small ‘modern hunebed’, a farmer’s inventive way of disposing of unwanted boulders. Walk southwestwards along Markeweg for just under a kilometre, till it bends to the right, and look out for a waymarked path through the woods. After about 300 metres you come out on Hoofdweg, beside the aforementioned car-park (yellow route).
This link leads to a short YouTube video about Hunebed D1 Steenbergen, in particular pointing out the repairs to the damaged capstone.
More details on Hans Meijer’s website.
Now this one, ive been waiting a really long time to get round to seeing. The weather had dissuaded us from going anywhere too high up, also, seeing as the furthest ive walked since my back operation is down the road to Sainsburys, and with hindsight and extremely achy legs, i’m kind of glad we didn’t go too high.
But, like Blossom found, it is a long and winding up hill road to the kerb cairn. We dithered a bit at the start trying to find the right route up, inadvertently following the same route up as Blossom.
It was very warm, we were waterproofed against the drizzle, but in summer you either stay cool or you stay dry, not both. It wasn’t long until we entered the clouds and the outside world disappeared.
The map clearly shows the cairn on the east side of a forestry track junction, but I could see stones on the west side, closer inspection proved the map to be wrong. The cairn is indeed on the west side of the T junction.
The kerb cairn even three years ago was losing a battle against the surrounding heather, but it’s a little worse now, three more years and you’ll struggle to find anything at all. What I’d like, would be to take me bike up and stay there all afternoon trimming and pruning. The ride back down would be eye opening to say the least. It would benefit hugely from a tidy, how exactly i’m not sure, but i’d definitely like to see it better. Maybe someone else would.
Up to fifteen stones stand in a circle, some here some there, lots of gaps though. Some stones are contiguous, some are isolated. Some are over a foot tall, and some had to be teased out of hiding.
An off center hole in the cairn is,probably the site of the cist, only one long stone remains now, cist cover or one of the side stones we couldn’t tell. The shape of the stone at one end looked like the wear you’d expect from a standing stone, but it could just be the shape of the stone.
I really liked this kerb cairn, but it was a long walk and almost hidden by the heather, the ordnance survey and the low clouds. I’ll be back.
It’s been a few years since Blossom helpfully highlighted the existence of this cup marked outcrop, and ive been dying to come here ever since. Unlike Bloss though we parked at the very pretty Nant y Coed nature reserve, below Dinas settlement, north east of the cups . It is much closer.
It was about a twenty minute walk, but the way wasn’t immediately obvious, there is much going on with the map, but with much persevering we soon came across some worn out hut circles that showed we were on the right path and close to the cup marked start to the day.
The weather, it has to be said, was not exactly conducive to teary eyed views of the countryside, the clouds were low and we were in them, there was light drizzle, we were waterproofed but badly overheating. Visibility was down to twenty yards maybe.
So I was fairly amazed that we actually managed to find the cup marked outcrop. Alken remarked upon the number of cups we could see, about thirty maybe at a guess. I didn’t realise there was so many, naughty Blossom never said how many there were. Some are shallow, but most are perfect examples, some could be tricks of the light, all had water in them, some had poo in them. The out doors is soooo dirty.
Blossom mentions that there are supposed to be other stones with art carved upon them, we couldn’t find anything either. Then we find out about an Arrow stone in the next field and I wonder if that is it.
Shame about the weather, good site though.
I approached this site from the bottom of the cliff in Hollywood glen at N934024. There is a small waterfall on the east side of the road that runs through the glen and just beside this is a pumping house. Directly opposite this you can see a track up towards the cliff-top. It is extremely steep and arduous.
This is called a rath here but I’d say promontory fort would better describe it. It’s D-shaped, with the straight line of the D to the east and the maw of the cliff. It’s maybe 40 metres north-south, but the ditch, where it can be seen below the vegetation, is impressive. There are some earthfast boulders peeping out of the structure of the defences but it’s hard to say what the bank is made from. Allowing for silting over time, I’d say possibly 3 metres in places from bottom of ditch to top of bank.
There are no traces of any structure inside the small area of the fort, which has space for one homestead. Did the people who lived here, if this was a habitation site, build the stone circle below? The views west down to the N81, where traffic blasts noisily by, and across the Kildare plain are great. North-north-east the cairn of Slievecorragh is visible.
The long axis of the standing stone, almost NW-SE, points NW directly at the stone circle below. South-east is the peak of Church mountain with its cairn, though this is not visible from here. There is a handy stone placed at the base of the standing stone, probably used as a comfortable viewing seat with the narrow axis of the stone as a backrest, to look down on the stone circle. The stone now leans to the north-east. It’s over a metre tall.
