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County Tyrone

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County Tyrone (County) on The Modern Antiquarian, the UK & Ireland's most popular megalithic community website. The site also contains a vast wealth of information on many more ancient sites across the UK & Ireland.

Creggandevesky © greywether

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5 posts Aghascrebagh Standing Stone / Menhir	4 posts Aghascrebagh Standing Stone / Menhir	2 posts Aghnaglarig Standing Stone / Menhir
1 post Ally Court Tomb	14 posts Altdrumman Portal Tomb	4 posts Athenree Portal Tomb
15 posts Ballyrenan Portal Tomb	74 posts Beaghmore Stone Circle	10 posts Beltany Court Tomb
6 posts Broughderg Stone Circle	5 posts Broughderg Court Tomb	Carnagat Court Tomb
1 post Carnfadrig Court Tomb	9 posts Cashelbane Cairn(s)	6 posts Castledamph Stone Circle
3 posts Castledamph Standing Stone / Menhir	1 post Castlemervin Stone Circle	16 posts Clogherny Wedge Tomb
Clogherny Stone Circle	8 posts Cloghmore Court Tomb	5 posts Copney Stone Circle
10 posts Cregganconroe Court Tomb	6 posts Cregganconroe Stone Circle	34 posts Creggandevesky Court Tomb
5 posts Creggandevesky Wedge Tomb	17 posts Crosh Portal Tomb	7 posts Davagh Forest Chambered Tomb
6 posts Davagh Water Standing Stones	10 posts Dunnamore Wedge Tomb	19 posts 2 sites Dun Ruadh Stone Circle
3 posts Glenknock/Crosh Chambered Tomb	7 posts Glenknock or Cloghogle Portal Tomb	6 posts Glenroan Portal Tomb
2 posts Glenroan Chambered Tomb	6 posts Goles Stone Row / Alignment	The Honey Mug Standing Stone / Menhir
7 posts Keerin Portal Tomb	15 posts Knockmany Passage Grave	4 posts Knocknahorna Stone Circle
3 posts Leitrim Portal Tomb	10 posts Loughash Wedge Tomb	3 sites Loughmacrory
2 posts Moymore Stone Circle	Murnells Portal Tomb	3 posts Radergan Standing Stone / Menhir
Scraghy Portal Tomb	6 posts 1 site Sess Kilgreen Passage Grave	4 posts Shantavny Scotch Wedge Tomb
2 posts St Patrick's Chair and Well Bullaun Stone	Tamlaght Portal Tomb	3 posts Tulnacross Standing Stones

Latest posts for County Tyrone

Showing 1-10 of 428 posts. Most recent first | Next 10

Davagh Forest (Chambered Tomb) — Fieldnotes

There are supposed to be the relatively substantial remains of a wedge tomb here but you would never tell if you just happened by. Indeed, all that can be seen is an overgrown mound with a few stones here and there. I can well understand AR Cane’s perplexity, but I can confirm that yes, you were in the right place. The fallen tree has been removed and maybe there might be a move afoot to clean up the site as there seems to be a lot of work in this part of Davagh forest.

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Posted by ryaner
27th October 2021ce

Keerin (Portal Tomb) — Fieldnotes

Sheet 13 of the OS Discoverer Series contains such an amount of megalithic treats that it would take an age to get to and see them all. And then when you’d completed that, you could start on the ones that are on the NISMR that aren’t marked on the paper map. The area between Omagh in the west and Cookstown in the east, north and south of the connecting A505, has to be one of, if not the richest areas in all Ireland. Possibly Parknabinnia in the Clare Burren comes close, but that’s mainly wedge tombs, whereas here it’s court, portal, wedge tombs, cairns, stone circles, rows and standing stones. And these are the ones we know of – what lies beneath the peat in the parts of mid-Tyrone that haven’t been explored yet?

Keerin portal tomb, or dolmen if you prefer, hints at the possibilities, as does, obviously, Beaghmore, but we’ll save that for later. In the meantime there’s this. In the middle of a bog, where reclamation work is continuing west of the road from here in Broughderg, is a little flooded gem. We parked at the entrance to the little shebeen/club with the Palestinian flag flying and headed through the kissing gate. 250 metres south-east of here are the roadside remains of a court tomb that we’d visited a few months back. We’d bypassed this in our rush to reach Derry, put off by the experience at the ruined court tomb where the bog has pretty much inundated what’s left. That was a mistake.

The tomb is not visible from the road 120 metres into the bog. The terrain is all rushes and heather above the peat. There is a vague path from the kissing gate but you need to be well into the field before you catch a glimpse of the capstone. From what what we could make out this is a near-perfect example of a small portal tomb. The literature doesn’t mention a doorstone and there are doubts about whether there is a backstone, neither of which we could check. The chamber is flooded, an oily soup gently swirling, quietly tempting further exploration which we declined. The capstone is at ground level at the rear, rising to about half a metre at the front where it has a handsome flattened face. The two portals are well-matched, as are the sidestones.

We tamped down the surrounding rushes in a bid to see a bit more of the monument but I felt like I was being a bit too intrusive. Large flakes of the capstone are falling into the gloop in the chamber and it seems that the stones are more fragile than at first glance. Judging by all the activity in the vicinity, it’s not hard to imagine that this whole area might also be one day ‘reclaimed’, maybe revealing Keerin in all its glory, but you would have to hope that any such work would be done by the proper professionals.

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Posted by ryaner
25th October 2021ce

Crouck (Standing Stone / Menhir) — Fieldnotes

About 120 metres east of Dun Ruadh is this heavily leaning standing stone. It looks to be in quite a precarious situation but is said to be 1.7 metres tall. It may be part of a ruined something or other but that’s just pure speculation. It seemed to us that, along with Dun Ruadh and the chambered tomb west of it, Crouck and Crockneyneill Hill has much more to offer the megalithic explorer, but today we had other, bigger fish to fry.

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Posted by ryaner
23rd October 2021ce

Edited 24th October 2021ce

Dun Ruadh (Stone Circle) — Fieldnotes

Sometimes when we head out we aim big from the get go. We’d been in Tyrone and Derry a few times this year and there was a seriously glaring omission. Ten or so years ago I’d made a fairly feeble attempt at Dun Ruadh and had been thinking about it since, kind of saving it for some sort of epiphanic occasion from deep within my imagination.

We parked at the old, abandoned schoolhouse at the bottom of the farm lane. Turns out this was built ‘of stones looted from the cairn’ in 1877. There was, what we thought to be, a dead sheep lying in the small courtyard at the front of the building. Creepy. We headed up to the farmhouse and knocked looking for permission. Nothing doing, no-one in, except the dogs in the yard. Well, here we are, and Dun Ruadh is just up there, a couple of gates and fences away. So here we go, spending some time at the small chamber on the way.

The territory is reclaimed farmland, sheep and some cattle. Estyn Evans, writing in 1966, says that the cairn “reaches a maximum height of 7 ft. and it is unlikely to have been much higher because at this point it is capped by a small patch of peat which presumably covered the entire site before the cairn was plundered.” And plundered and plundered and excavated or, again Evans, “much mutilated”… to the point where you wonder what the point is.

So first off, let me say I loved Dun Ruadh. It truly is special. But, and I didn’t want there to be a but, but there is… gorse is colonising the whole south-western paved area and ‘entrance’, hugely detracting from the impact of the place, eating into the inner ‘courtyard’, gobbling up the space and crowding out the vibe. Which is not to say that there’s no vibe there at all.

The ancient rubble of the horseshoe cairn retains such a huge amount of rustic magic as to obliterate my cynicism. Some of the excavated cists are visible in the cairn and the whole place has an air of quiet mystery. There’s no activity on the expanse of the hillside save a very few sheep and the atmosphere of the place seems to be funnelled through the monument. The orthostats of the ring, though gradually being encroached on by the gorse, blankly stare into the inner space, silently ceremonial, transporting us willingly to a lost time of mystery and wonder.

There is the possibility that such an important site as Dun Ruadh could be taken into state care, like at Beaghmore six kilometres to the east, where the manicured intrusiveness hardly detracts from the magic of the place, but in the end I know I’d hate that, all perfect fences, no doubt tight up to the stones, and explanatory noticeboards and the rugged ruin-ness all tidied up. Which is not to say that a half an our and a bushman wouldn’t improve matters. Arriving back at the car, the ‘dead’ sheep was back on its feet, corralled temporarily at the schoolhouse, giving us a lesson in lightheartedness.

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Posted by ryaner
23rd October 2021ce

Edited 26th October 2021ce

Crouck (Chambered Tomb) — Fieldnotes

So you’re not going to get much attention when 150 metres north-east up the hill is the wonder of Dún Ruadh, but hang on in there – there’s bound to be a nerdy old completist goon arriving soon in the next millennia or so. Absolutely underwhelming to my companion, especially after I had waxed lyrical about what was to come on the long drive up into deepest, darkest, wonderful mid-Tyrone, I loved this little assemblage of 5 stones, 4 still in situ, almost certainly the remains of a megalithic tomb. What type? I said probably a wedge tomb while on site, but now, on reflection, I’m thinking the remains of the chamber of a court tomb. But who knows? A starter to whet the appetite for the red fort up the hill.

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Posted by ryaner
21st September 2021ce