CianMcLiam

I set a reminder in my phone to check out this cairn at sunset around Bealtaine as Martin Brennan suggested it has an early May alignment. Well, I since switched phones so it was only while looking for a drawing of something else (the stone at Killin in Co. Louth, which he seems to have confused with Carrickrobin) that it hit me. As luck would have it, the weather then wasn’t great but tonight it was perfect.

The sunset does indeed stream down the left hand side of the passage (as looking out) and forms a rectangle of light on right side of the backstone which slowly decreases in size as the sun reaches the horizon. It may have even entered the now-destroyed right hand chamber before dipping below the horizon.

Humewood Castle is closed presently for renovations and redevelopment (though the golf resort plans are presently being appealed by An Taisce), but luckily I bumped into some people at the gatehouse and was able to venture in for some pics.

The castle is a very large Gothic revival piece from the 19th century complete with walled gardens, lakes and a very large deer park. The co-ords on archaeology.ie place the stone in the middle of a disused tennis court but after some moseying around I spotted a large slab sitting incongruously between two paths very near the castle itself.

The carvings are well worn but immediately obvious once you are close, I doubt there is any time of day or year when the low sun would naturally bring them up at their present location.

A large three ring design with external gutter dominates the panel at about 14” across, surrounded by cups with single or double rings and occasional gutters. Simple cup marks are also dotted around and at the curved top end.

The gent I spoke to (who also assisted me in taking some pics by standing in the sun!) told me it may be moved on the advice of an archaeologist because of the risk of damage being on the verge of the road, it seems to bear fairly recent scars which are thankfully on the un-carved end.

The whole stone is about a metre and a half long, larger than it appeared in previous photos I had seen. Apparently it was found buried while one of the artifical lakes was being built in the castle grounds.

This stone is now in storage in Collins Barracks in Dublin with the decorated face facing the wall.

*Important*
The landowner of this site can be very hostile to unannounced visitors, please do not attempt to visit this site without securing proper permission. Please be warned.

This is a very eroded panel on a lozenge shaped outcrop. Eight cup and ring marks are reported in the Co. Louth survey but I noticed some parallel lines that look suspiciously artificial. The whole panel is about 1.5m long and on two levels.

Description from Co. Louth Survey:
“Lozenge-shaped tabular rock outcrop, with eight cup and ring motifs. These range from a triple-ringed example to simple cup and ring. There is a much-eroded single cup and ring mark on a nearby rock outcrop. (CLAJ 1981, 111)”

On our visit on 12/4/08, the whole site was very overgrown and required quite a bit of clearing and careful removal of dead foliage before the markings became apparent. Permission was not easy to obtain, only for the fact that he remembered Blaze from her previous visit did we finally get the ok. The landowner lives on the main road, not down the lane, look for the boarded up windows and bullet holed windows and do approach with caution. Do not park near the stones blocking the driveway as he does not like this.

After scouring the fields for the rock art locations on archaeology.ie for a couple of hours I slowly accepted that these panels have either become turf covered, or, more alarmingly, been blown up with dynamite like many of the outcrops on the hillside obviously have been over the past few years.

The blown up outcrops in the first field from the road have not been cleared and the remaining stone still litters the hill, this is probably not a good sign since it seems to suggest clearance or building stone was not the reason for using dynamite.

I only found these carvings after a lot of staring at outcrop. There’s definite parallel grooves enclosed by lines but these are hugely weathered now and difficult to bring out in full. I also spotted a single cup surrounded by an almond or ‘eye’ shaped ring on the same outcrop.