Latest Fieldnotes

It has been closed every time I’ve tried to visit! Anyone else had better luck?

Driving from Limerick junction to tipp town take the first left and follow the road. The standing stone is in a field on the left hand side. Further on is a massive motte which is definitely worth a look.
The stone is over a 1m tall. I only got a pic of one side because again a few angry bullocks took a run at me. They are pretty mental this time of year. Weird you think they would be happy with the warm weather and all the grass.

This is an interesting standing stone. Take the tipperary town road to golden and turn left in Kilfeackle at the motte. Carry on this road until you come to a cross-roads/ church, if you are at the church you have gone too far!
There is good track across from a house about 400m before the cross-roads on the right hand side (Coming from Kilfeakle) follow this to its end and the standing stone is behind two ditches from here.
The stone itself is more lieing down than standing and id say is about 500-750mm high.
I couldnt get close to it with a herd of hungry looking bullocks in the field it was in.
Interestlingly enough in seems to be in a bowl-barrow or a depression in the ground.
Would be nice to get another look at it sometime. There is a ring-fort about 300m away.

Kedrah is an interesting fort to the north of the town of Cahir. It really is huge with the banks up to 2-3m high in parts. Im not sure whether it was built up or whether it is a hill that was altered. It seems to be looking to the cairn on the summit of Sturrakeen. However there are so many cairns on the hills around here its hard to know.
There is a ring-barrow to the south of the hill-fort. The banks of the fort seem to be dug from the inside henge-like but to be honest I’ve no idea what period this fort belongs to so any help would be appreciated.

This I got from Fourwinds site Megalithomania. It really is a lovely place to go with a old Church and a holy well nearby.
While I was at the church a wee doe ran out followed by his friend, which was lovely!
As per Toms site this is a turning stone that could be used for cures by turning the stone in the bullaun clock or sun wise and for curses by turning anti-clockwise.
Its very close to the town of Caher on the road to Tippeary Town.
Its not signed posted but follow the OS map and cross the railway line into what looks like someones farm-yard and follow the road/ stream you can see the cell in the distance and the church is on the right-hand side.

Link to the church
megalithomania.com/show/site/1235

There is a new information board here and they have cleared some of the wall at the back of the tomb away so that you can get a better picture. This is a truly impressive tomb and definitely worth a look. The capstone on top of it is massive and really would have taken some moving.

A few excerpts from the info board:

Labbacallee is aligned on the setting sun of the equinox, 22nd March and 24th September when the day is of equal length. On these days the sun illuminates the chamber.

The excavation in 1934, a womans Skelton was found. Her Skelton was found in the inner chamber, her head in the larger outer chamber.

Edit 15th April 2011

I sped down from work in Limerick to try and make the March 22 equinox at Labbacalle – my first problem was a sign-post on the Mitchelstown bypass that read Glanworth was only a few kms. Unfortunately it must be a least 14kms. I made it for about 6 30 but at this stage the sun was all but gone down as you can see from my pictures. If there is an alignment it must be from much earlier possibly 6 00pm.

[visited 21/10/06] Back here again, sans pain, but still with the mud. We walked towards the farm from the West pondering where the cist is and found a helpful sign just before the farm which directed us straight to it. Reading the miscellaneous notes here, it seems a round barrow mound covered the pile of rocks now lying in a muddy field. There isn’t much to see now beyond that, but I think its still worth the effort. Does make me wonder what is at the bottom of the other few thousand barrows around the south...

Access is fineish. We parked in the pub between the third priddy henge and the incomplete henge and then walked along the road to get to the path to the east of Pool Farm. There are “No Parking” signs up there, so I suspect its the closest point. Just before you get to the farm this way, turn left across 2 fields and you’ll see the cist. Best bit about walking this way is you can walk through the farm and back along the road to the West of the farm past the field with the incomplete henge!

Oh and chalk up another victory for the evil cows, we were chased out of the field to the West of the farm. Yet more proof of the Bovine threat, how long before our govt moves to combat this evil????

Item no. 295 of the Arch. Inventory of Co. Meath, this is said to be a “standing stone with about thirty cup-marks.” The stone is very like a kerbstone, about a metre high and 2 metres long and it is possible that it comes from a local passage grave. I counted 54 cup-marks, though not very scientifically.
The site is a very well looked after graveyard in the drumlins south and below Sliabh na Cailí. I couldn’t help but speculate that the mound that the graveyard is sited on is a passage grave that has been christianised and that this is where the stone comes from. There are some very rough-hewn gravestones that look suspiciously like the structural stones of a megalithic tomb.
Across the road is a holy well with some lovely sweet water.

Well, we chose a nice day for it, swirling mist and driving rain mean an absence of photos for this site I’m afraid!

This is a truly amazing site, Mither Tap is so visible from so many sites, yet I hadn’t realised that so much of the ‘nipple’ as it were, was actually man-made-I knew it was a fort but there’s a real scale to it. The vitrified walls are incredible-I had read about them, but never seen them up close. The heat and sheer size of fire need to melt these walls must have been off the scale-the walls are at least 100 feet high, and yet clearly melted and slumped. If, as theorised, the burnings were carried out by an invading force, it must have been a real statement of intent to the locals – shock & awe anyone?

Wonderful site, and although steep only about 1 hours walk from the Bennachie Centre car park, even with 2 four year olds in tow.

I have named this stone after a nearby glen , it should really be called Monzie (pronounced mo -nee )but that would cause confusion as there is a more famous monument at another Monzie near Crieff . This stone was found about a year ago and is interesting in that the cups are aligned to the cardinal points. The nearby hill is Carn Liath (975m) part of Beinn ’ Ghlo .

I can confirm the reports of the figurehead on the walls of Lud’s church. My grandfather was brought up on the old farm accross the river from the Youth hostel in Gradbach. He always told me on walks there as a young man he would often walk past the remains of the firgurehead rotting on the floor of the ‘church’ and always referred to her as ‘Lady Lud’. He is no longer with us and would love to have known more. All I can do is confirm its prescence.

On holiday in Penwith last week, I’d agreed to meet Mr Hamhead for lunch in the Tinners Arms as he was also in the area. Suitable refreshed after a pint and a meal, we set off for our agreed target, Mulfra Quoit. I’d last visited the quoit some 3 years ago, and took the steep approach from Try Farm on that occasion. Today though, we took the much easier (but longer) approach from the north. After a couple of comedy pictures, we discussed the apparent moulding on the underside of the capstone, whether the quoit was ever ‘whole’, and the alignments with Chysauster and Castle an Dinas (and the time difference between the ages of the sites).

Some of the gorse had been burnt off near the quoit, and investigation to the south uncovered some old field boundary walls, and a possible hut circle. As the weather was closing in from the south, we made our way back to the car, and the heavens opened as if to say “Get orff my hill!“. We got.

There is supposedly a second circle in the vicinity, known as ‘Tregurnow circle’, located roughly at SW 437 245. However, I was there last week, and could see no sign of it on the ground (last reported sighting was in the 1970s.)

Lots of interesting stones in the field boundary wall a few yards away, but that’s not unusual around these parts.

The OS map has two standing stones here in Moohane. However on investigation I could only find one. The one on the top of a small hill. It is about 1.6m high and the hill it is on gives it a commanding view.
I think Knockfennel and Knockadoon can be easily seen from here.

This is on the road between Hospital and Knockainey. It is one of them really thin standing stones, about 1.2m high. I couldn’t get in to have a look at it with the bullocks.

This is just to the northwest of Rath Croaghan, it is described as a a fallen four-sided standing stone, 2.78m in length. Its name is linked to the name of Maeve and the folklore in the area.

It is easy to get to these stones. The farmers don’t generally mind as long as there isn’t a crop.If there are livestock then that is your problem.In my case I waved to the farmer and he waved back so all was ok.These are rather unremarkable stones,on one is an inscribed cross-also unremarkable-but the Society of Antiquaries state that this is one of the first examples of a symbol of the Christian faith to be placed on a stone of a pre-historic group.

I stopped by here on my way back from a flying visit to Cork, it looked quite close to the road on the map and near to a track. I hadn’t stopped before even though I pass every couple of weeks, the recent photos make it look like a bomb crater. I was feeling a little optimistic that things may have improved for this little circle but unfortunately the optimism didn’t pay off. This circle really has had it rough, and the damage seems to be ongoing, the interior of the circle is a trampled pond with jumbled stones sticking out all over the place. The outside isn’t any tidier but despite the damage and disfiguration it’s still possible to make out that this was a very nice circle with an unusual pair of portal stones. Or, maybe I was only able to see its former glory because I had seen photos of it in a more complete state on Anthony Weir’s site (as in link below)...

I didn’t enter the field that the circle was in as it had quite a few bullocks in it and a whopping great bull who made a sneaking advance and then a full scale charge, I had one of those horrible sinking feelings that the electric fence wouldn’t ‘work’ and for a moment I think the bull had the same thought judging by his fit of rage. I didn’t delay making my way back to the track only to find that the bullocks in the opposite field were not too keen on me and my tripod either and to my horror, their fence had already been trampled to the ground... If your planning on visiting here, be very cautious!

I parked outside of a house opposite the field where the stone is sited. A lady came along and asked if I was going to have a look at the stone.She lived here and is a member of a local archeological group. She asked me if I knew Nick Brand, she was hoping he would give the group a talk about his stone travels. I can’t add more because Nick has told it all.

Before I came here I had a look at the restored Dove Cote,there is quite a lot of restoration going on around here.A short waljk down the lane is a gate on the right and a path leads to the Earth House.The site is well looked after and there are quite a few little surprises for the searcher.

I approached this site from the A928.You can park in the are by the track gate.Walk down through the woods ‘till you come to a fork and take the left. Carry on for about 400mtrs and keep an eye to the right.The Stones are on some unused land wich is rather overgrown. There had been some gorse clearance and the farmer had helpfully piled the gorse on top of the smaller stone.As Nick said, these are not very impressive but the large one is LARGE.

Another sorry urbanised site. Destroyed in antiquity, the stones were used in a wall, and most have disappeared. The equally abused Brandsbutt Pictish stone was also broken up for walling material, before being Blue Petered back together and dumped here. Just to finish it off, they then built a housing estate around it.

Not a place to linger, I’m afraid.

Four years on, and at last I can reach the circle-and its well worth it. A truly massive recumbent, and everything about this circle seems big, although the suggested arc is quite tight. This could have been quite claustrophobic when complete.

Most recumbent stones are chocked into place, and this is no exception. However, I like the fact that this ones main chock stone was also shaped to fit snugly against the flanker. There is a smaller stone adjacent to the flanker, which I feel could well be the ‘backsight’, the smallest stone of the circle moved from its traditional place directly opposite the recumbent.

I know there’s lots to see in Aberdeenshire, but you won’t regret a visit here. Visit Sheldon while you’re at it.

Four years since my last visit, and the circle seems bigger than I remember. This is probably due to the fact that the grass and gorse have been well cut down, and this makes viewing the circle so much easier. I hadn’t even made out the outlier on my last visit, but now it stands clear, and the arc of the circle can be clearly seen, along with the sheer size of the tallest stone, some 8ft high.

This is a wonderful site, although a cutting north wind was blowing, there was all manner of rubble strewn around the interior: field clearance and possible cairn rubble certainly, along with the ubiquitous scattering of quartz.

Had a long chat with the Farmer & Bob the sheepdog, and he said that not many people visit anymore (the farmer, not Bob). This is a real shame, and those of you that have visited Aberdeenshire without seeing this circle have missed out on something special. Next year?

To the east of Llanddona, park on the lane that leads to the sea and follow the footpath heading towards the radio mast, not easily found, when the path arrives at a small wall follow it downhill and the stone is off to the left nestling at the foot of a small hillock.This pointy menhir is nearly 6ft tall