CianMcLiam
This was the fourth time I went looking for this fabled panel and I ended up returning four times, getting washed out each time by wild winds which sent the driving rain in every direction.
The panel has been moved recently from it’s last resting place, under some barbed wire beside a gate, to an altogether more picturesque spot under some trees alongside field clearance.
This is wonderful stuff, a really superbly executed set of ten (count them!) rings around a central cup with not one but two radial lines. These lines extend outside the rings and meander off the side of the surface.
The site is very easy to access and locate now, if you enter Malin from the south, cross the estuary and take the next right. Proceed past the crossroads and look out for two new yellow painted houses with white trimming on the right, park here. Cross the road and hop over the rickety gate, the panel is on the far side of the trees extending to your right from the field wall.
A south west view near sunset
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
Looking roughly eastward across the valley towards Lough Brin
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
The rock art with the ‘right side’ up and the two bullauns
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
The underside of the rock art panel seems to have more cups, perhaps with very worn rings? In the background we uncovered two large, lovely bullaun stones, the base of a rotary quern and what looks like the remains of a church window arch.
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
No this is not a joke nor a neolithic representation of Casper the ghost-god. I think.
Photo taken outside Graiguenamanagh Library with kind permission. Usually sits beside a less picturesque fileing cabinet.
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
This is the fourth time I tried looking for this panel. Somehow I always ended up arriving late in the day and with fading light levels and plenty of discouragement from the people in the house next door, I never managed to locate it.
This time I beat my way into the wildly overgrown disused graveyard with my tripod and began inspecting the fallen gravestone, mostly barely squared off rocks. After half an hour searching the small clearing I was just about to give up. Wading through the waist-high thorn bushes, my feet kept hitting larger and larger stones, one stone in particular had a large flat triangular face and more hacking revealed a faint arc formed by dirt resting in a groove.
Five minutes of jungle clearing later, the full face and some nice deep cup marks could be seen. With a little side flash, a rather wonderful panel appeared on the camera screen.
This is a rather nice little boulder panel, planted (literally) in the garden of the lovely woman who discovered it during field clearance in 2004.
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
A blizzard of snow envelops the hills in the background
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
On a stormy and snowy afternoon
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
Gratuitous use of Fisheye
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
A typically stunning shot of the full arch by Simon Marsden:
marsdenarchive.com/library/preview.php?id=00000002&lb=redi&pg=8
The interior of the arch, the panel is on the small red sandstone face in the lower right.
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
This is a small (partial?) panel, a cup with four rings on sandstone, built into the ornamental arch that gives the ruined mansion of Arch Hall it’s name. There are one or two other lines that may indicate some more designs were part of the original composition.
A fisheye view of the tomb and it’s views, by keeping the horizon centred the fisheye keeps the horizontal straight.
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
Another odd collection of motifs, all the panels I found had a similar kind of unfinshed and self-concious feel
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
This panel seems to consist only of one cup and ring on the nearest edge, another visible higher on the face and a single cup mark at the top of the stone (just off shot left)
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
This is a large panel with widely spaced motifs, there are more that can’t be seen at the top left
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
Rock Art in the Rain
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
This is another section of the outcrop, this time across the top surface which is very overgrown in parts and slopes into a field wall.
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2007
Vanishing fast under the turf
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2007
Looking roughly south-south west.
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2007
This is a section of the western face of the outcrop, there’s quite a collection of motifs here that are visible and more that don’t show up so clearly. The decoration continues up across the top of the outcrop, under the growth of mosses and grass.
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2007
This is one of the special panels, a spiral-like motif beside a rosette of cup and rings, and more cup and rings trailing off the frame.
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2007
This is the eastern face of the outcrop, virtually every surface on this face and across the top is carved, as well as large portions of the west face also.
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2007
With power lines badly cloned out in Potatoshop
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2007
Looking south west down the valley, with Knockroe and Brandon Hill in the background.
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2007
Looking out from the rear of the chamber with the entrance portals at the rear left
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2007
Last light of solstice on the floor of the chamber of Dowth South 21/12/07 (the beam is broken and split by some high trees in front of the entrance). Happy solstice 2007!
Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2007
