Ballybrack is siutated on the beautifully named Cromlech Fields. Someone obviously thought long and hard about that one! It isn't fields at all, but a council estate just outside Dublin, but never mind.
Having recently visited Hully Hill near Edinburgh, when Andy suggested we visit this site, we both jumped at the chance. It is so unusual to see prehistoric monuments surviving the onslaught of the 20th/21st centrury, that I am always somehow lifted by these sites. Yes, they are shown little respect and are often mis-treated, but they do still exist.
There was broken glass and crisp packets strewn all over but the stones retained some beautiful markings and at least they hadn't been too badly damaged over the years.
This was our final site on a very short but packed evening in the lovely Ryaner's company and it seemed fitting to leave him at this site and head back onto the motorway and back into Co. Meath.
The gloriously incongruous Ballybrack portal tomb has survived against all the odds, and somehow now found itself on a piece of wasteland in a ghastly, grey council estate... the sort of wasteland where small boys play football and girls go to gossip and bitch. I guess the tomb makes a change from a bus shelter. Tiny, almost cute, the underside of the capstone was worked so as to be completely flat. Astonishing. From one angle it resembled an upturned grandpiano. Amidst the dogshit, I sat and made a quick sketch.
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