Latest Fieldnotes

At 141 metres above Helsby there are great views to Wales, the Mersey river ,Merseyside and the mid Cheshire ridge of which this is the first hill .Park to the south near the old sandstone quarry and make for the trig point, as you approach it you’ll pass the ramparts on your right.The ramparts are better preserved on the public side of the fence than on the farmed side , a bit strange that all the feet of the public did less damage than a few farmers ploughs.

100 metres or so back from the Wicklow Gap road/Glendalough/Laragh road the Wicklow Way comes down to the road from Brockagh mountain. There’s a clear signpost for it there and directly opposite on the other side of the road there’s a farmgate. Over this about 20 metres into the field and to your left is the first of the bullauns. Said to have ‘9 granite boulders with 13 basins’, I located 8. The first of these is very font-like, with one bullaun carved/worked into the flat surface of a split rock. 10 metres to the west of this is a boulder with 2 bullauns, one of which seems to be in poor and very worn condition. Roughly 10 metres south of this is another double bullaun, again with one perfect specimen and its worn twin. Walk roughly 20 metres south-west of here and you’re confronted with the “Seven Fonts”. This is a concentration of 4 boulders, 3 with a single bullaun and one with the aforementioned rectangular basin with 3 bullauns inside it and one outside. 25 metres north-west of here is a huge earthfast boulder with a single bullaun. Which gives you 8 stones and 13 bullauns!

Heading north-west from the caretaker’s house, I decided to try and locate the stones behind the sawmill. You can see this about 80 metres up along the west bank of the Glendasan and as I was already in the field I went for it. Careful back here! The banks of the river are very steep and slippery. I was fairly nervous here but then I spied the huge stone in the river with the single bullaun Quite mad really, but I descended to have a better look and get a better shot. The late-November-swollen river, and the fact that I was in someone’s back garden, stopped me going any further.

It’s beside the right-hand pillar at the end of the car-park and is hugely ignored, with rubbish littering its vicinity. The stone itself has been broken, probably dug up and brought here to be willfully neglected.

Walk straight through the main monastic settlement and cross the wooden bridge over the Glenealo river and there it is. The first of the font-like stones, it’s surrounded by a heap of ‘megalithics’ that may or may not pre-date the christian settlement in their arrangement.

I thought the name may have had some roots in the Pallasgreen/ grian or sun goddess. However from the Gaelic for Rosegreen, it seems that it literally means rose green.
This mound is just off the R686, there is a church across the road that looks like it may be built on a low mound. Perhaps they are both barrows. The field this mound is in is up for sale for a housing development so this may be the last we ever see of it.

This ringfort is just outside Cashel. I include it because it is marked specifically as “Rath Na Drinne” on the OS Map which is unusual and because of its proximity to Carron Henge which is only a few kms away. It is a three bank ring-fort but perhaps it may orginally have been a henge? Its huge in the centre maybe 300-400m diameter.

Strangely enough this is the second townland near to Cashel that is called Ballinree. This stone is no longer here. It would have been in the middle of land that is now used for tillage so I guess it has been removed. The view south to the hills is great.

This mound is about 2m high and maybe 10-15m diameter. It is to the rear of a gentry house. It is very close to a standing stone. Perhaps the stone was on top of it but that is unlikely.

27 Nov 2006
After trudging around trying to find anything that might resemble a fogou to a shortsighted Ordnance Surveyor, I made my way to the top of High Moor. There sat two nice little cairns, which as soon as I approached resulted in me being attacked by huge flies.
Determined to capture the cairns on film..or whatever you call a digital image..I swiped about with my stick before snapping away. It made no difference of course but strangely as soon as I moved away from the cairn they left me alone.
So, not much in the way of fieldnotes about the cairns, I will go back next summer and have another look..and take some deet!
18 September 2009
Three years on from my last visit I find myself on the top of High Moor again...and the flies are still here! This time they are not so much a problem and I am able to inspect the easterly cairn, larger but lying lower than the summit cairn. It is also flooded with the central cairn appearing as a small island inside a circular sea.
This is a wild bit of moorland overshadowed by the hills all around, why it is known as HighMoor I do not know!

This standing stone has fallen. It can be found off the Horse and Jockey to Cashel (N8) road. Best to locate off of a OS map, its the first right after a long turn after the H&J coming from Dublin. Pass thru a cross roads and there is an old gentry house on the right hand side. Stop at the field just before it and on the rhs there is a cattle crush. Hop this and walk along side the walls of the estate. When it stops turn left in towards a circular barrow ish looking area. The stone is lying here. It is about 2m long and Im not sure which end is up. There is an artifical mound to the north east and I think the stone may have been on some kind of barrow.

Back in the summer I finally made it up onto High Moor. Despite scouring the hillside I could find very little that looked fogou like. The photo shows one of many hollows left by the stone cutters. In winter I would imagine these holes fill with water...perhaps someone imagined a flooded passage running underneath...who knows!

Two more stones found today at Glascorrie one under turf and the other under a pile of field clearance .

On the way from Kilnaughton to Kintra, this stone is next to the road on the left (it is marked on OS Explorer Map 352). Carragh Bhan means ‘white stone’ and near to it are ‘possible stubs of two other standing stones’ (Caldwell). The top of the stone is similar in shape to the hill in the background (Cnoc Mor Ghrasdail?).

Believed to be an iron age hillfort, this is an impressive structure overlooking the River Laggan valley. It features a ‘flat rectangular summit, about 15m by 25m, enclosed within concentric ramparts – three main ones separated by large ditches’ (Caldwell). Easily approached by footpath on road from Bridgend, where it crosses river at Mulindry Bridge. Name derives from Norse for ‘fort on the crag’, but the site predates the Vikings’ arrival on Islay.

Source for quote: Islay, Jura and Colonsay: a historical guide – David H. Caldwell (Birlinn, Edingburgh, 2001).

This well is located around 2km north west of Ardbeg. It is marked on the OS map as Tobar na Dabhaich. The name probably means ‘Well of the Hollow’ – Tobar=Well, Dabnaich=’vatlike hole or hollow’ (Watson, 1926). This would fit, as the well is set in a hollow in the side of a small hill. It appears to be a natural spring, with a shallow pool in the rock.

An alternative name seems to be St Michael’s Well, perhaps linked to the fact that immediately to the south is Druim Claiggean Mhicheil which is “ridge of Michael’s good field” (Domhnall MacEacherna). It is close to the ruins of what is reputed to be the remains of a plague village (see folklore).

My father (who grew up nearby) told me that it was a place where people visited for good luck when they got married, and indeed there at least two horseshoes above in the rock when we found it, one old and rusted and one seemingly fairly recent with ribbon attached. I believe there were also coins in the water.

The antiquity of the site’s human use is unknown, but it is some distance from the nearest house (and a difficult journey) so it is clearly not a modern (re)invention. It is close to a hut circle, so at the very least could have been a water source in ancient times. It would certainly bear checking out by people more knowledgeable in the archaeology of well-sites. Now the difficult bit – getting there.

My father took me there in 1984 (see photo) from Callumkill, a journey involving going over several hills and getting wet feet in the bog in between, and getting lost (hence teenage sister’s fed up expression in the photo). Last year (2005) I attempted to revisit it with ‘clear’ directions from my uncle Jim, who used to live at Callumkill. This time I headed via a public footpath marked on the OS map heading north east from Ardbeg and passing close to the well. Let’s just say it is not as easy as it looks – I got lost in bracken over head height, caught in a sudden storm, lost my map climbing over a fence and stumbled over a dead cow in a stream. A reminder of taking care when you are looking for sites in more remote locations – you won’t be able to get reception on your phone to call for help! I didn’t find it, but hope that someone else will have more luck.

Sources:

Domhnall MacEacherna, The Lands of the Lordship (1976), Argyll Reproductions.

WJ Watson, History of the Celtic Place Names of Scotland (1926)
st-andrews.ac.uk/institutes/sassi/spns/watsdg.htm

Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow 25-11-06

Sadly it’s been chalked, but displayed well next to a collection of axes, arrowheads and Aberdeenshire Balls.

The museum doesn’t say where it was from just who donated it (Ludovic Mann in 1955) but it is the same stone as recorded on BRAC as being Greenland 3.

I would never have come here if not for Monumental About Prehistoric Dublin and its author, Tom Fourwinds. Right beside the red Luas tram line, in a public park, I couldn’t help wondering how many thousands pass this by each day on their way to and from work and don’t even SEE it. Aside from Ballybrack portal tomb, this is the most urban site I’ve been to. I climbed the mound in the vain hope of understanding the monument. It reminds me of the Rath in Tornant Lower themodernantiquarian.com/site/9025 with its two tiers. The views to the south, across Tallaght, towards the ridge above Glenasmole were worth coming here for.

A fifth bullaun at this site! I returned here to show a friend III and IV then decided to have a scout around for I and II and came across another one. It has 2 bullauns, a very shallow one about 7 cms across and 3 cms deep (almost just a cup-mark) and a much deeper ovoid one, about 12 cms on the longer axis and very deep. The rock has fissured through the larger bullan and seems to me to have been moved to where it now lies, possibly causing this damage.
I never located I and II.

There are two of these, one on each side of the road. Whilst the tradition of young couples holding hands through the hole as they take their vows at Doagh (Co. Antrim) is interesting, it can hardly apply here – these giants are nine feet high! I have no idea what they are, or from which period they come.

There is a smaller version (about 2½ feet high) further south on this road, at the turn-off to Three Howes.

Head out on the road from Port Ellen to Ardbeg. After Lagavulin you will come to the junction with the road to Ardbeg on the right. If you turn left instead there is a small road heading up to the farm at Callumkill. As you go up this road, this cairn is visible on the hill to your right. Walking up to it is a bit of a trek through the bracken, best to check with the farm too because sometimes there’s a bull in the field next to it.

No idea of its age – doubtless people have built/rebuilt/tidied it up over the years. I first visited it about 35 years ago as a small child, when my grandad worked on the farm as a shepherd. I remember putting stones on it myself (it already existed at this stage of course). On the other hand there were non-naturally occurring stones lying around the cairn, so even if it was (re?)built relatively recently people may have used materials left over from a more ancient monument.

Last visited Summer 2005.

Shown on OS map as a hut circle. Directions: on the road from Bridgend to Bruichladdich (A847), turn right and head north along the B8017 in the direction of Gruinart. Just past Lyrabus, there’s a footpath marked on map heading East past Cnoc nan Nathrach. There are tumuli marked on the map (which I failed to locate) and a ruined cottage, then on the right there’s this site. I visited in the summer, but the track was extremely boggy. Wellies recommended. Visited July 2005.

‘A standing stone, some 3m high with a pointed top, set on a low ridge overlooking Lock Indaal’ (David Caldwell, Islay, Jura and Colonsay: a historical guide, 2001). On the main road from Bridgend to Bruichladdich (the A847), this stone is visible in a field on the right about half way along.

(visited July 2005)

Un-named stone on Murk Mire Moor. Similar in type and proportions to Blue Man i’ the Moss and Margery Bradley

Apologies for such a dull pic but this field , close to an esker on the River Earn was the site of a Class 1 henge 19m in diameter a Class 2 Henge 44 m in diameter and another possible henge 22m in diameter .