Seefin Hill Chambered Cairn View all content for Seefin Hill

So another 7 years has passed since I last visited Seefin. I truly hadn’t believed it was that long – it’s so close to where I live and I see it so often from various angles as I explore the north Wicklow hills that I take it for granted. There was a break in the weather that coincided with a break in my schedule so I decided to head up. Recent reports of vandalism at upland sites had me wondering. I parked in the forestry entrance just at the end of the army rifle range. It’s wide enough for a few cars to park and still have ample room for emergency services etc. There seemed to be some sort of hill-walking jamboree on in the area – or at least it was finishing by the time I arrived around 3pm. There’s a quite vigorous loop walk that you can attempt – Seahan (with its cairn and passage graves) to Corrig to Seefingan (with its unopened cairn) and on to Seefin and down and then back up the road. I’ve been to all save megalithicly barren Corrig and have never attempted the loop, which one could say takes in the whole of the ‘Kilbride passage grave cemetery’. The ascent is a trudge for us mere mortals. There were rain clouds threatening all the while so I wasn’t waiting around. The hill starts to steepen once you pass the bracken fields and gain the heather line. There’s a well-worn track here but you’re clambering more than hill-walking. About 150 metres below the cairn I came across a dressed stone that has a very bullaun-like hollow. I can’t say I’m 100% sure of it. It’s splayed right across the track and stepped over or around by all those ascending and descending by this route. I’m tempted to add it here but maybe not. The approach to the cairn here is from the north-west. It starts to appear on the summit horizon line when you’re about 30 metres below and 200 metres away from it. It looks just like any other mountain-top cairn from here, a pile of granite rubble – but looks can be deceiving. Were you blissfully ignorant you would be in for a major surprise. You might begin to suspect something greater is happening if, like I did, you skirt around the cairn anti-clockwise and begin to see the collapsing kerbstones on the west and southern arcs. Unlike at the north and east of the cairn, the hill here falls away steeply and the resultant pressure on the kerbstones has taken its toll. Moving around to the east the kerbing continues, but further out from the cairn, showing that even at this height cairn material robbing has occurred. And then you reach the entrance to the passage, aligned almost due north onto the cairn and passage grave on Seahan. I used to be able to glide through the labial portal stones but daren’t risk it these days. The small forecourt in front of the entrance is intriguing – was it filled and sealed after a certain period of use? Is the drystone walling of its sides original? There is an entrance type sillstone/kerbstone about three metres in front of the entrance, but in front of it is a higher but narrower slab and then, in turn, cairn rubble in front of that. I didn’t venture into the passage from either end today, but did guiltily climb down into the chamber through the hole in the roof. The corbelling of the remains of the roof is still impressive, leading one to wonder how magnificent it was when originally built. Macalister’s 1932 ‘excavation’ report (really just a survey) only runs to 5 pages and some of it is worth quoting. He says: “The chamber lay partly roofless, and had apparently been rifled and left derelict centuries ago. It was almost full of stones, thrown into it, as we were informed, by the soldiers in the camp [Kilbride] for a pastime.” Nowhere in the report does he mention the trig-point-like stone with it’s concrete skirt I identified on this visit. He goes on to muse that it was early Christians that broke into the roof, speculating that the carving of a cross into the uppermost remaining stone of the roof as evidence that they may have “cut the cross as a barrier between themselves and the possible vengeance of the plundered ghosts.” Hmmmm. Macalister only emptied out the smaller stones from the chamber and a lot of stones have fallen back in since 1931 to join the large boulders from the roof. People come here regularly as it’s on that popular loop mentioned above. I’ve usually met people here on previous visits and today was no different. Nosing my way around among the rubble on the floor of the main chamber and into the recesses I heard voices above my head and resented the intrusion. My best interactions with the stones are usually an intimate and solitary pursuit so the arrival of outsiders broke the spell. The stones around the lip of the hole in the roof are not overly stable so I felt just a tad vulnerable and emerged from the chamber before I’d wanted to. The rain clouds were gathering to the south as I sat in the sunshine and pondered all this. The chamber and recesses at Seefin have more secrets to reveal and the next time I come I must give myself more time to explore, especially at the neck of the passage where it joins the chamber. The complexity of the construction here is fascinating, as it opens out into the chamber and soars up to the roof. The five recesses and one mini-recess would all bear further investigation too and a better camera than my camera-phone. I love Seefin and was happy to see that the spate of vandalism that has occurred at other upland cairns hasn’t occurred here; which is not to say that it’s not vulnerable. It remains so and I’m hoping that the amount of water in the passage is only a sign of the very wet, late summer we’ve had and not something more sinister.

Posted by ryaner 7th September 2020ce

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