Latest Fieldnotes

Small standing stone outside Hospital. Id say its only about 500mm high.

This stone also isnt marked on the map but it really looks standing stone ish to me. As per the style at the moment i stuck a horse in the shot for effect.
There is a mound marked nearby but it looks in bad shape. More like field clearance than a mound really.

I first listed this as a comment but feel it needs its own place. We tried to visit Greycroft at the end of August 2007 and parked the car facing that eyesore, that is Sellafield, as soon as we pulled up and were getting ready for our nice walk to the circle, we were immediately set upon by armed police, asking us what we had in mind? After about thirty minutes of questions on various topics, Where you from? Where you going? Where you been? Even our poor old dog, tofu was interrogated, after satisfying himself that we didn’t in fact want to blow up the ex power station, Officer Friendly went about his business, leaving me the wife and dog shaken up slightly to say the least. We decided not to venture to the site after all and leave it for another time, and hopefully not getting banged up in the process.

This is a strange site, there is nothing marked on the top of Luddenmore on the OS map yet there is a very impressive standing stone and the remains of what appears to be a cairn.
Archeaology.ie calls it a stone circle and Ive seen it mentioned as being a cathair.
So I cant really say what is up here other than what I saw myself. The views are amazing and again this seems to be interconnected with the other major hills around here. You can see across to the hillfort on Knockroe and it seems to line up with Cnoc Greine behind it.
It is hard to make it up onto the summit, it is a in the middle of agricultural land and there were lots of horses and cattle on it. There is also a recycling Mr. Binman site and a quarry nearby so be careful if you do decide to climb up here.

This standing stone isnt marked on the OS map. It is on the top of Luddenmore / Buchillbreaga.
It is about 2.25m in height. From below it looks huge altogether.
There is also the strange broken ruin of some kind of turret. I dont know what it was for. Perhaps it had something to do with the antennas that are up here but i doubt it because it is held together using lime mortar.

This is a very unusual Bullaun Stone as far as I can see.
The stone itself must be about 1.25m high by about 1.75m long and is probably big enough to be a standing stone in its own right.
The depth of the bowl is about 600mm deep, I presume that must be a lot for a bullaun.
Also there is what looks like a few cup marks on one side. They may be natural but who knows?
There is a church and holy well about 200m away from here. However to put it in context, it is also in an area rich with older sites such as standing stones (a holed one at Inch) and the hillfort at Knockroe and the unusual features on Luddenmore.

It took me about 3 visits to find this stone. Finally I asked in Cahir Castle about whether it had possibly moved into the Castle.
The girl behind the desk didnt know but there were two OPW workers hanging about and one of the guys could confirm it was there. He called it St Patricks Knee stone.
I headed back up again and used a stick on the over-growth around it. Im living in Cahir at the moment so will try and keep it clear of growth.

Cueva de la Menga and Cueva de la Viera are located next to each other on the left hand side of the road as you leave the Northern end of Antequera. There’s a big green sign on the road next to them.

There is a portacabin next to the sites which was manned when I was there. The person provided a leaflet with a map showing how to get to La Cueva de Romeral, which was helpful, as it is not quite so easy to find. They were also giving away some nice free posters when I was there.

Cueva de la Menga is impressive, and has obviously been located with the Los Enamorados hill face in full view of the entrance. Three massive stone menhirs support the roof, of which the centre one features a square cavity.

I saw this on a map and told myself one day i’ll come back and take a closer look, today was that day. Hopefully you’ll have an os map to navigate the maze of small lanes, just follow the road untill it enters the forest, park here there’s plenty of room. Take the path north for ten minutes then look out for big stone off to the left under the trees. The stone or ‘Carreg’ is a really good sized stone covered almost totally with mosses, resting on a slight bed of cairn , you can just see under the stone at a few points. There isn’t much cairn material but the size of the stone makes up for it . Even the forest is light and breazy but obscures the view which would have been considerable.

Not easy to get to. I parked at a crossroads N.W of the stone, walked passed a few farms, and then turned left through a gate or four, allways heading for the highest ground . When on top of the hill the stone and cairns are big and obvious. A tall angular stone strangely free of moss and lichen with fantastic views of the valleys below and the hills behind. On top of the nearby mountain tops are plenty of cairns,I could have stayed here a while, but I’d somewhere else to be, it took 23 minutes to get back to the car.

Some impressive cave art here, and a fine collection of finds (including bones and tools) are on display. No photographs are allowed within the caves, but they do sell postcards.

In the summer months the caves are closed between 1 and 4 pm, so make sure you don’t arrive just as they close for lunch. We arrived just in time for the last tour of the morning session at 1 pm having just been to the Ronda Dolmen. Well worth the visit it was too. The Guide was knowledgable, and although he spoke primarily in Spanish he did ensure that we as the only English speaking folks on the tour were not left out. The parafin lamps provided make the tour all the more atmospheric.

There are numerous cave paintings, the most impressive of which is an image of a fish. There’s also images of buffalo and human figures. The limestone cave formations are impressive too, and they even speculate that a formation that they call “The Organ” was used to make music. Certainly striking the long narrow collumns of limestone formations created a wonderful resonating sound.

The directions to the Ronda Dolmen in The Megalithic European are either out of date or there is a typing error in the road numbering. The road that you need to take heading from Ronda to Sevilla is the A374 and not the A376 as stated in the book. I also did not see the KM107 sign mentioned in the text, however the turnoff onto the A372 to Grazalema is fairly prominent. Once on this road the track to the dolmen was fairly easy to find – the chain supported but two small green posts is right there as mentioned. You need to follow this track round on foot past the edge of a field, and then past a fenced in olive grove. The dolmen is actually on the edge this olive grove on the far side, behind some babed wire. You can get up close by skirting round the olive grove, along the edge of another field.

As described in The Megalithic European, the setting is a wonderful bowl, surrounded by mountins.

We combined our visit to the Ronda Dolmen with a visit to the Cueva de la Pileta which is not too far away from here.

Access is only possible after mid to late summer when the Manifold River dries up and runs underground. Always wondered what the folk back in the day made of this....unless they had it figured already.
Follow river-bed round to the back of Beeston Tor Farm and there are two entrances, 10ft, above the river bed....one is very obvious, about 6ft up in the cliff wall (a blind tube of around 100ft) to the right of this (about 30ft) is a fissure looking opening into St Bertrams itself.
It’s worth taking a torch as the tunnel at the back of the cave leads into quite accessible tubes and chambers if you don’t mind crawling now and again.

I visited this site after hearing Christian Corlett say there was a carved stone found here in his recent lecture on rock art in South Leinster. It’s marked on the map as a barrow but Christian calls it a mound and says, given the carved stone, that it’s a possible passage grave.
The mound is surrounded by a fenced in circular area which in turn is surrounded by a quarry/gravel pit. The topsoil has been removed right up to the fence and there are large, deep gouges in the surrounding terrain. The mound is roughly oval in shape and possibly 3 metres high and about 25 metres in diameter along its longer axis and about 20 on the narrower. There are quite a few smallish boulders lying on the mound, none of which I could see were carved.
The situation of the mound on flat terrain, west of the river Barrow, shows extensive view across to Mt. Leinster and the Blackstairs and south to Brandon Hill.

A very flattened barrow, about 20 metres in diameter and with low remains of its bank and ditch. Very curious as to why the OPW felt it needed 3 fograí.

Beside the road and with an enclosing fence right up to its bank, this barrow is about 30 metres in diameter. There is a strange collection of large stones in its centre that may be field clearance or could signify some sort of chamber.

I’ve listed this site as a Taula as that’s probably the main attraction for most folk. The taula is missing it’s cap, but does have an interesting hole in it, in the manner of the Stone of Odin.

I was quite chuffed to find this out, as it seemed very difficult to get any information regarding the site, it’s existence only being marked in a very vague fashion on one of the Menorcan Megalithic tourist maps.

Thankfully, there were some helpful folks at the farm, one of whom was quite happy to guide me to the right area. This is just as well, as it would have been nigh on impossible to find without exact directions.

The poblat is still quite in evidence, though it’s been co-opted for agricultural purposes, and it seems as if some of the original structures have been rebuilt over the centuries. Like little circular drystone structures which my guide explained were alleged to be made from the stones of the dwellings in the ancient village.

There are also a couple of interesting anomalies in the poblat zone, namely a line of large orthostats which seemed reminiscent of the facade of something or other, and a patch of outcrop bearing large stonecut basins, some circular, some irregular almost head-and-torso shaped.

These parts are reasonably accessible, as the grove in which they sit is grazed by livestock. The livestock are prevented from getting into the Taula sanctuary/Talaoit by a substantial wall.

On the other side of this wall, it is very overgrown. The trees and bushes are virtually impenetrable. it’s a bit of a scramble to get to the holed Taula, around which can be made out a good few other orthostats poking up from the very uneven undergrowth/cobbles mixture that is underfoot. Some of these orthostats also have holes, some of which looked natural, as if the stones had been chosen specifically because of the holes.

The talaoit is not easy to get up, I found myself wriggling under branches and through nettles to circumnavigate it to find if there was one of those little cave things built into the side, which there is. It was very disorientating, but I think the cave thing points roughly in the direction of El Toro.

It’s a bit of a mad and gnarly old site, but if you like your prehistoric sites raw, unexcavated and untended, this is a very untidy and atmospheric example of exactly those qualities.

This isnt far from Kilronan and can be seen from the road as you head from Kilronan to Dun Aonghus. It is not as impressively situatied as Dun Aonghus but you actually get a better view of all parts of the island. Worth a look for the views alone.

The North Tipp Inventory places this beside St. Kierans well. However it is actually 500m down the road at what locals call the “knee” of the road. This bullaun is where St. Kieran is meant to have knelt down leaving his knee print.
The bowl itself is pretty small, about 200mm diameter by maybe 150mm deep.

This one is located in a Protestant Church / Graveyard just off the Nenagh to Cloughjordan road.
It is made in a earth fast outcrop. It is about 400mm diameter by 300mm deep.

This bullaun stone is located just off the main cahir to clonmel road beside a fairly easily spotted ringfort across from a nursing home.
I jumped the fence and headed in to have a look, watch the bard-wire fence it is actually electric.
The stone is large and the bullaun must be about 600mm diameter maybe 300mm deep.
There are at least three other half bullauns where it appears the rock was split in half.
From here the hill of Slievenamon really dominates the area.

These two bullaun stones are in the RC church in the village of Lorrha beside a Dominician Friary.
It looks to me as if they may have been transported from elsewhere.
The one on the left is about 300mm diam by 200mm deep. The one on the right is bigger and may be two bowls that has merged into one.
Diameter 600mm by 250mm deep.

So a day traipsing around non-descript menhirs and ruined dolmens can have its rewards after all. And this is my reward. This magnificent dual-sex idol stone, massive and alone, in an unsignposted field.
Around 4m high the SW face is a perect goddess figure yet the NW is the slanting priapic phallus of all time. There is some evidence that the stones was shaped and even if not tis a well selected and beautiful stone.
These little (or massive actually) surprises are the reward for all our hard work. REAL DISCOVERIES!

This bullaun was moved from Modreeny Churchyard just outside Cloughjordan but it is now used as the holy water font for the RC church in Cloughjordan village, OS Grid Ref R976879.

This bullaun stone is only about a mile from where I live and yet I never heard of it growing up.
The bowls dims in the North Tipp Inventory are diameter 370mm and depth about 300mm. It is about 20m away from a ringfort.
To find it I would recommend a GPS or if stuck give me a shout!