gjrk

Nothing relevant to megalithia, but I was up past here today and my son shouted; “Look at the rabbits Daddy!” A pale brown patch in the hedge behind the stones had risen and separated into three wild deer. The rare warm day and the calm must have invited them out of the forest. Fauna, don’t ya love it?

Permission to visit both Knockawaddra rows should be obtained at the farmhouse at the beginning of the access-track, on the by-road to the east. Very nice people and interested in the monuments on their land.

Well worth a visit, despite its rather gap-tooth appearance and easily accessible at the end of a farm track just north of the Argideen. Permission to nip in can be obtained from the farmhouse on the rise south of the river, on the first left hand turn. They will probably stress the importance of not leaving fences disconnected so obviously there have been some disasters in the past. Preaching to the converted, I know.

Here lie the bones of a monster. The entry in the Archaeological Inventory, following O’Nualláin, describes a stone pair – two slabs of mismatched height, the taller over two metres – but doesn’t mention the brooding block swaddled in whitethorn, 20 metres to the east.(1,2) Or the others fallen south from the body of the fence. While these latter may be coincidental the eastern megalith, tall, thick and imposing, sits the line of the recorded pair in position and wide-face orientation.

Only Aubrey Burl, with a politely suggestive question mark after the ‘2 st st’ in his gazetteer, gives a published hint of the giant that must have stretched here.(3)

‘Sleep.
Do not fear the roaming.
eye.
Sleep.‘

Federico Garcia Lorca, from ‘Berceuse for a Sleeping Mirror’.

Permission to visit may be obtained from the farmhouse immediately south, on the left hand side of the road.

(1) Archaeological Inventory of Cork, Volume 1, West Cork, 1992, no.196; 42
(2) O’Nualláin, PRIA 88 C, 1988, no.133; 247
(3) Burl, ‘From Carnac to Callanish: The Prehistoric Stone Rows and Avenues of Britain, Ireland and Brittany’, 1993; 261.

There’s something just satisfying about the yellow of freshly cut fields – as redolent of the May/June cusp as hedges full of hawthorn blossom or the crisp heat, not yet turned heavy and dead on the senses.

A great time of the year for Bohonagh. The nettles and long grass around it only seem to enhance its wildness and great age, its dominance of what would be an overwhelming growth for a smaller site.

It’s an interesting test. Swap places in your mind with Drombeg. Would it be improved here, in these surroundings? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Bohonagh would certainly lose something by being tidied up.

The 30 odd heifers crying aggressively outside the fence give a reminder of the origin of the townland’s name.

The GPS reading above is for the obvious standing stone, though the first sight over the gate is the horned boulder. Sketched by Webster almost eighty years ago and described as a “demi-dolmen”, he proposed that it and the recumbent pillar immediately to the east were the remains of some type of monument.(1) Jack Roberts wrote that it could be “loosely classed as a cromlech”.(2).

My suspicion is that it may have been an upright block that has sagged and split. The main cut smoothly separates the centre, forming a sort of dry megalithic sandwich, while the upper portion is bisected into two further pieces, both resting on the lower.

The horn effect is quite striking. Bronze trumpets sounding a bull call while flames and figures dance. Maybe not, but who knows?

The “anomalous stone group” described by the Inventory is about 50m north and comprises a standing stone and a prostrate slab.(3) The compilers seem to have missed the stone described by Roberts, that now forms part of the hedge and which prompts the tantalising possibility of a three, or even four, stone arrangement. Webster’s sketch shows the field before the wall was erected; then containing the two standing stones, the grounded slab and a fine stretch of empty grass as far as the house at Quaker’s crossroads. From a position in the centre of the triangle, and looking southish – parallel to a line between the two uprights, your gaze travels straight across to the large boulder. Contact.

(1) Webster, ‘Rude Stone Monuments in West Cork’, JCHAS 35, 1930; 35.
(2) Roberts, ‘Exploring West Cork’, 1988, Ch(1) 39; 44
(3) Archaeological Inventory of County Cork, Voume 1, West Cork, 1992, 926; 113.

Something worth pointing out about Lettergorman, with regard to the quartz boulder. It has previously been noted, a belief held by the former owner, that the stone was probably moved in from the field, from a position either along the axis or in line with Carrigfadda.

However the stone has been in the same position since Windele’s survey in the mid 1800’s and when viewed from centre-circle crudely indicates the four stone grouping on the slope of Maulatanvally. An arrangement three-quarters composed of quartz.

So, this is it for Garryglass – deserted, destroyed and now grown over. Like a frontier fort reduced to a limp point of rubble it left the last century with just one stone, presumably the central monolith – having entered it with eleven others. Meanwhile the ‘rough pasture’ mentioned in O’Nuallain’s 1984 survey has become a dense plantation of trees and the clearing left around the stone has filled with a head-high and almost impenetrable thickness of furze and bramble. When finally I fought my way through I was almost tempted to kiss it so it could wake up and make me its prince.

Don’t visit unless:
(1) You really like quartz
(2) You have a GPS and follow these coordinates. Even then there’s a probable reading difference and...
(3) You don’t mind a bit of discomfort and the probability of ripped clothing.

Something about nothing maybe... On the top of the knoll in the field to the west there’s a prostrate ‘orthostat-sized’ slab with one level end. A doorway for the little men or one of the missing stones...?

Pointing a touch further north than Bohonagh, in terms of declination, with a measurement of 1.22 degrees*, Knocks North provides a cruder alignment to the equinoxes, further hindered by the tree growth on the horizon. On the other hand the local historian that has witnessed it mentioned the sparkling of the falling sun on the big splash of quartz on the axial stone. Worth a visit, I think.

Permission can be obtained from the farm to the south, on the left hand side of the road.

* Patrick and Freeman, ‘Revised Surveys of Cork-Kerry Stone Circles’, Archaeoastronomy, no.5 (JHA, xiv (1983)); S51: Knocks/A.

Just a quick few words to inform anyone who may have visited this site previously that the land owner has removed the hedge that was about fifteen metres west of the complex. It’s a bit of a cold rinse to the senses if you’re used to seeing it the way it was, but it does open the view out. Less distraction in the eyeline I suppose.

The ground is intact, dry and solid for a distance of about ten metres from the monument but between this and the gates to the west and east it looks to have been turned over and reseeded, with grass growing in isolated clumps. This ground, even in the dry conditions at the moment, was excessively waterlogged. No change there then.