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One of three portal tombs that lie on the north side of the road into Málainn Mhóir, this is an almost complete ruin. It’s in a pasture field up a slight hill, about 250 metres from the Carraig to Malin More road. All that remains standing is one, admittedly large, portal stone. The chamber is in a state of total collapse and there is much field clearance dumped on the remains. There is an Irish government fógra here, marking it as a protected site.

Another roadside bullaun encountered on our short trip to the south-west Donegal Gaeltacht. It’s at a junction, beside a stream on a small lane off the Carraig to Teelin road. The stone, abutting a similar, but much larger stone, is made of a reddish conglomerate and much eroded.

With so much to see in the megalith-rich townland of Malin More, you could be forgiven for skipping this. That would be an error however and its road-side location makes it even more attractive for a quick nosey.

About 200 metres south-east of Dg. 90, a double portal tomb that I missed out on this time, it’s also about a kilometre north-east of the famous 6 tomb alignment and on the main road west into the hamlet of Malin More itself.

There are two stones here – a large millstone embedded in the turf, and the bullaun stone, roughly a metre and a half square, with the 23 cms deep basin set towards the south edge. The small stream that flows past the stone is a delight and the whole setting is well looked after, beside the driveway of a house.

The first of the many megalithic sites to be encountered as you travel west into the large townland of Málainn Mhóir (Malin More). It’s 500 metres before Cloghanmore (Dg. 95) and on the other side of the road.

The tomb, like the others in the vicinity except Cloghanmore, is trashed, and hard to interpret on the ground. This ground is heavy and the grasses are high – the field, boggy pasture, feels like it hasn’t been grazed in years.

The monument is about 10 metres into the field from the road but the bank is high – a judicious bit of the usual clambering had us beside the tomb in a relatively short time. I couldn’t make head nor tail of the place until I got back and looked at the plan. The round structure plonked on top of the gallery is thought to be a lime kiln, so any hopes that there were substantial remains here could be quickly forgotten (I imagine the kiln builders built it here because of the ready supply of stones and not for any proto-sacred reasons). There are some structural stones of the gallery remaining, but with the tall grass and rushes hindering any easy interaction I would say this one is for the completists only.

I felt a bit like Fagan (in 1847) and Moore (in 1871) who both, on their visits here, “found it difficult to interpret, perhaps because of its disordered state…”. That, and the rain. Well really only the rain – but the place is not looked after, ‘state care’ being meant only euphemistically. Board of Works restoration at the end of the 19th century, the concrete track in the 20th and a bit of signage and the place is left to itself.

The car park is handy. So is the concrete track. Then you’re more or less on your own, and it’s swampy. And the rain. And the two companions, me thinking I should have left them in the car.

I would normally say that this is a fantastic place – the two subsidiary chambers, one in each arm of the court; the two carved stones; and the two parallel chambers, reminiscent of magnificent Magheraghanrush in Sligo. But not today. We were beaten back to the car by the torrent, waterproofs proving to be barely water-resistant in the West Donegal downpour. In these times of I-take-what-I-can-get, this was a very rushed visit and utterly frustrating. I’ll have to come back.

One of those sites that I’ve seen a lot of shots of, looked forward to visiting, got there finally and found it not remotely similar to what I’d imagined. Which is not to say that it’s not amazing, just that I found it a tad underwhelming, especially after the drenching back and Cloghanmore.

The laneway that runs along the fields that contain the tombs is extremely narrow. Eamonn Cody, in the Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume VI, County Donegal (2002) numbers the tombs 1 to 6 from west to east. After Cloghanmore and still in the slipstream of the torrent, I didn’t feel like vaulting the gate, so I only photographed 1 and 6 at opposing ends of the ‘alignment’.

Both 1 and 6 are the two most impressive chambers. Cody mentions that there may have been a seventh and it’s worth quoting from the previous mentioned survey: “Thomas Fagan …, who visited the site in 1847, refers to the existence of seven chambers, … but provides details of only those numbered 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 here. He claimed that the chambers had stood in one long cairn that he estimated originally measured 100 yards E-W and 20 yards N-S.” Cody notes the larger gap between chambers 5 and 6 and says that this might have contained the destroyed 7th chamber.

There are remnants of a cairn at chamber 6, at the top end of the alignment and in someone’s garden. It’s the largest of the six but difficult to get a sense of given its location. I did clamber up and attempt a shot back west down the alignment, but in our hurried, drenched and flustered state didn’t meet with much success. The bottom chamber, chamber 1, is impressively large, but was surrounded by a flock of dreadlocked sheep so we didn’t enter the field. Another one I’ll have to return to.

Beside St. Columba’s Church in Gleann Cholm Cille, station number one of the Turas pattern-walk, this is an oddity, marked as an unclassified megalithic tomb. The boundary wall of an ancient track that leads north in the direction of Farranmacbride court tomb (visible from here) crosses the east side of the mound.

It’s still recognisable as a megalithic tomb so how it ended up in its christianised state is open to a bit of research. The ancient track is beautifully unkempt. There is some dry-stone walling on the northern end of the mound. Cody says possibly the remains of a court tomb but that will need further investigation.

Ballylumford ‘dolmen’ is well signposted at the junction of the main A2 Belfast to Larne road and the causeway road across the southern end of Lough Larne on to the peninsula of Islandmagee. After that, you’re practically on your own for the 9 kilometres you must travel until you nearly drive into the tomb.

Roadside tombs and megalithics are great but this is ridiculous. It’s also very wonderful. The adjacent house seems to be empty, possibly abandoned by the residents who seem to have retreated to the rear of the building in reverence and out of respect. Or maybe not. I knew this was close to the road but I wasn’t expecting just how close. I’d also expected to have to knock at the house – not a bit of it. There’s a car-park right beside the monument and we appreciated the “go ahead” we received on asking permission to park from one of the locals.

The stones of the chamber of this passage tomb are all substantial. I found it hard to examine it too closely, caught up the whole drama of it. Taking a photo of the south-west side could be hazardous as you step back into the road. On our visit it was very quiet, no cars passed by in the 20 minutes we spent there. As you can imagine, views are mostly blocked, but I did notice, way away to the north-north-west beyond the side of the house, the bulk of the south end of the Mull of Kintyre, an added bonus on a sun-filled visit.

The tiny hamlet of Roughfort lies just south of the old Antrim Road and its replacement, the M2 Belfast to Derry road. It’s a quiet, sleepy, semi-rural, middle class idyll with a quite amazing, one-off ‘passage tomb’ called variously Carn Greine, Carngraney, Granny’s Grave or Graina’s Grave, all widely regarded to be derivations of Carn na Gréine, the cairn of the sun.

Easily accessed over the field gate, we asked permission of the folk in the house opposite to park in their driveway – this duly granted we vaulted the gate and headed down. When Fourwinds visited prior to the publication in 2008 of his Monu-Mental About Prehistoric Antrim he found the tomb badly overgrown with brambles, in danger of being swallowed completely. Thankfully this has changed and, since david’s visit in 2024, improved even more. The grass in the field is now a lush green, possibly soon to be used for grazing – mid-May is a good time to visit.

I’ve never seen anything quite like Carn na Gréine. Closest in similarity on the island to the Tramore group of passage tombs, as Fourwind’s says, I think this site even defies that comparison. The way it declines in height from the south-east down to the north-west tail-end; the sealed nature of each of what were mini-chambers and the discovery of human remains under each roofstone, seems to make this a truly one-off, not a passage tomb, nor a wedge tomb as it is sometimes called.

It lies there, much like a massive caterpillar, slouched down into the ground with an almost bulbous head at the top end – a sealed chamber of six stones supporting a large capstone to a height of about 2 metres. From there, it gradually diminishes in height until the last stone at the far end which lies unsupported on the ground. From either side it gives the impression of movement, sluggishly making its way up the slope on which it is sited. Well not really, but you have to allow for flights of the imagination here at the cairn of the sun. Fantastic.

In the hills north-west above Belfast, at the end of the urban part of the Crumlin Road where the city runs out, lie the remains of Ballyutoag court tomb. It’s marked on the OS map as a cairn, probably because its excavator named it the Hanging Thorn Cairn. Some of the surrounding terrain has the blasted look that many areas so close to the city have – trashed old machinery and rubble, half wasteland, half dustbin. There’s wide open green spaces too but with a slight feel that you’re on your way to somewhere else, away from the iron giants that maraud over the landscape and the raucousness of the city, but just haven’t made it yet.

The fence lines around here are taut, unforgiving. Fortunately enough the monument is only about 50 metres from the road and there’s an easy enough point to traverse the barbed wire without endangering yourself. An ancient wall runs right down to the fence – this wall and bank seems to be an old dividing boundary and it runs right across the front of the forecourt of Ballyutoag. This forecourt is all that remains here, bar a few embedded possible chamber stones that seem to be in line with the entrance jambs.

There is a prehistoric sense here – this would have been a fine megalith before the gallery was pulled asunder. Facing out of the court from between the jambstones/portals, the construction, especially of the two massive opposing boulders two stones into the forecourt, looks robust and would have taken a serious and time-consuming effort. We didn’t really hang around, on the way to the sun cairn up the road, but it was worth checking out, imagining what once was and witnessing what remains.

I’ve been in the vicinity of Birrinagh (Biorainneach – abounding in coarse grass?) on a few previous occasions and never visited it. Like Drumhart earlier in the day, it’s not a widely known megalith, though there are some photos of it on the ‘net. It is marked on the OS map but isn’t in the Survey of Megalithic Tombs of Ireland. This series, whose publishing began in 1961, is still incomplete, though county Longford was covered in a 1972 volume with the omission of Birrinagh. Strange.

Spotting the tomb in the field below us as we pulled in at the farmhouse at the end of the cul de sac, we knocked and asked permission to head down. The gentleman farmer was very friendly and freely passed on some other, unconnected information that had me and my mate slightly flabbergasted. He was more than happy to allow us to visit the monument.

The stones look very rough hewn. Five remain – both portals, a three-quarter height doorstone, a backstone and the slipped capstone. There are no sidestones but the chamber continues to have that box-like feel found at many small portal tombs. The surrounding terrain is wide open, low hills surround the massive pasture field in which it lies. It’s maybe for the completists only – the megalithic wonders at Cleenrah and Aghnacliff are only about 7 kilometres to the south, but the rewards here are sufficient for the melancholic and pensive stone hunter.

Roughly six kilometres south-west of the green and lovely lanes of Killashandra is the dual-court tomb of Drumhart. Its relative isolation means that it is so rarely visited that I couldn’t find any photos of it online. Anthony Weir mentions it at irishmegaliths.org.uk. It has a brief entry in the archaeological inventory of Co. Cavan, culled from the more extensive entry in the Survey of Megalithic Tombs of Ireland Volume III, published in 1972, including a precise plan but minus the usual photo/plate. This last is probably due to the fact that when they visited it, de Valera and Ó’Nualláin report that “The monument is very heavily overgrown.” Not any more.

Fourwinds, who created the original site post here, gave it the designation of ‘chambered tomb’. He’s not wrong – but a more satisfying category would be the obvious court tomb. I can’t check what he has it as on his megalithomania.com site as this hasn’t been accessible for quite a few years now, a huge loss to the Irish stone hunter community. Ah well.

The people on whose land the monument lies are lovely. They were more than happy to allow us to head down into the little glade for a butcher’s. The tomb is in quite a ruinous state, neither end having much of a court left – the western the better of the two, the eastern non-existent. In fact all that remains of the eastern tomb is the box-like first chamber and its jambstones. This has been colonised by a thorn tree but is quite distinct with the the sidestones roughly half a metre high and the chamber itself 4 metres long.

The western tomb is the more interesting, with a roughly 10 metre long, three-chambered gallery and some scant remnants of a court. None of the chamber stones, except the entrance jambs and some of the first chamber, rise much above the surrounding turf, and the floor of the whole gallery is filled with soil and is grassed over. Its current condition leaves one wondering was it every accessible post-construction, or was it closed off after it was roofed over and embedded in its cairn. Certainly you would have had to be quite tiny indeed to be able to enter the tomb.

There’s a couple more anomalies at Drumhart – the two tombs, though generally east-west pointing, are not aligned. The remains of the eastern tomb may, according to de Valera and Ó’Nualláin, be the second or third chamber of a three-chambered gallery and what I took to be entrance jambs could be segmenting stones, though the archaeologists do settle on it being the first chamber. Either way, a continuation of a line straight through the middle of this chamber would not hit the imagined backstone of the western chamber but miss it by a couple of metres to the north. There’s also what I thought to be a subsidiary chamber, south-east of the end of the western tomb. It’s possible that the lads missed this due to its overgrown state on their visit, though there is one set stone in the correct position on their plan.

We passed a while here, snooping around and up onto the rocky outcrop west of the tomb. It’s secluded, and peaceful and not yet overgrown. It’s marked on the OS map and the landowners said that they get a visitor maybe once a year. It’s not on the way anywhere spectacular but is well worth a visit if you find yourself in the locale.

Head west from Derrygonnelly in Fermanagh on the Knockmore Road. It leaves the main street in the town sharply south-east but veers due west after a couple of hundred metres. Knockmore cliffs soon rear up ahead after some hairpin bends in Glenkeel. They’re impressive, towering above the road, with the added intrigue of ancient caves on their back, some said to have been inhabited in ancient times. A couple more hairpins later the road rises higher and you’re in the badlands – but not before stopping off at the ruined Rossinure Beg court tomb. The henge to its east looks fine on the satellite photos but difficult to access on the ground. We’re on the move anyway and heading for Big Dog forest and its megalithic wonders.

Big Dog, Little Dog, Dog Little, Giant’s Stone, Giant’s Grave, Skaghlea Cairn, let’s just get out of the car and head in. This is wild country, isolated, sparsely populated if at all – it’s good to be out in the fresh air, much old man’s beard lichen in evidence, a portent of what lies ahead. The forestry is in a state of mixed maturity, about 10 square kilometres with a reported 4 megalithic tombs – one unclassified, two court tombs and a wedge.

We head for Dog Big court tomb, deceived by the map and satellite into believing that it’s just a few metres into the forestry from a track – there is no track, just an overgrown and boggy firebreak that reeks of treacherous clomping and sweaty effort, all for “… 3 earthfast stones & 2 displaced capstones…”. Forget it. There’s an almost complete court tomb further in. We decide to head there.

As we swing back on ourselves, both of us are blowing hard, the result of a long hibernation. Still, this is what it’s all about, on an adventure with plenty of time to shoot the shit and clear the head. Huge swathes of the forest have been harvested, the usual tumbledown mess replanted with fresh pines, ready to produce a return from the barren land hereabouts. Soon we are heading directly north, deep into the plantation with the most mature trees to our left and right. Skaghlea is close, but still elusive.

Again, the promised tracks are just firebreaks. The first seems treacherous, the second, further up the track, looks navigable. We take a risk, fleet of foot, determined – the tomb is deep into the forest, but in its own clearing and seeming to beckon us now. Off the firebreak and back south through a sliver of forestry and onto the first, badly waterlogged (rubber boots a godsend) firebreak, I can see the opening that leads into the the clearing where the tomb lies. Thomas has lagged behind, maybe losing some small bit of faith but I push on, and then… Wow! There she is, 150 yards down a boggy track, almost lost and very overgrown.

Sodden and saturated and almost with its own eco-system, the clearing is borderline-bog. The cairn is colonised by a verdant, trippy, almost mutant, fractal explosion of dripping plant life. The forestry people left a good deal of space and the cairn is enclosed, surrounded now with mature pines. It’s like having entered the Shimmer, otherworldly and spacey and disconcerting, drenched in mysteriousness. This is the real deal. Before long we’ve almost forgotten ourselves, lost in the isolation of the place – me clambering around and over the cairn in a futile attempt to capture its magic, my companion still and eager to drink in its desolate ancientness.

It is a court tomb, but it could be one of the first of its kind, reminding me of some of the early Carrowmore sites – maybe it was built by the people who landed at Ballysadare Bay 50 kms west-south-west of here 6,500 years ago. The court is discernible, just, its stones enveloped in moss – it’s quite small in comparison to some, the stones mainly rounded boulders and mostly unsocketed, as far as I could make out. There’s what looks like a passage tomb entrance stone at the place where the first set of gallery jambs-stones should be. This could be a fallen lintel but, again, it’s hard to tell. There is a chamber or cist-like structure on top of the cairn, not where you would expect and further deepening the confusion.

Go to Dog Little soon. The splayed cairn is not massive but its construction, with larger than normal boulder-type stones, could lead you on a path of wild speculation. I’ve a feeling it might not stay the way it is for much longer. The mature trees in the section of Big Dog forest that surround the tomb may be well set for harvesting. I’ve never really been a fan of forestry-enclosed megalithic sites and if the authorities do decide to fell the trees, this place, as it is now, will surely lose a lot of its magic, whatever the benefit of the all-round views might be like.

Lismahon mound, or barrow if you like, is 100 metres in off the Ballymaglassan road that runs south-west out of Batterstown. It’s not much but it’s on a mate’s uncle’s land and I’ve been meaning to check it out for a while.

I’d been here before, 19 years ago, and hadn’t bothered getting into the field. At the junction of a couple of drains, nowadays it’s completely overgrown and difficult to interpret. It has been mentioned that it could be spoil from the digging of the drains, but the landowner, Mattie Nolan, refers to it as a moat (motte? or mound?) and I’d prefer to go with his interpretation. That said, it is only with excavation that its provenance could be realised.

Batterstown (Baile an Bhóthar, the town of the road) is a small, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hamlet on the Rathoath to Trim road. It has a pub, a church, a GAA club and a petrol station/shop. It’s surrounded by ancient land that has been colonised by centuries of farmwork and subdivided by hedgerows.

Three hundred metres north-east of the village, behind the church, the infant Tolka (An Tulcha) flows, having risen about a mile north-west in the townland of Pelletstown. There used to be a Batterstown train station, the now defunct line running parallel to the river.

Rathregan townland takes up and envelops much of Batterstown itself, taking its name from the massive rath/habitation site between Rathregan church and Rathregan House. I had been to the rath a few years before but the entry on the SMR that showed a barrow 350 metres to its south-east was the target for today.

We parked at the old ruins beside the rath and clomped our way through the sodden fields, heading along the old cattle-rutted rail cutting that truncates the northern arc of the barrow. The misty rain didn’t dampen our spirits, back out on the hunt after a hearty breakfast in nearby Dunshaughlin.

Expectations were low as we climbed out of the deep rail line having spied the mound from three hundred metres further west. However, it is still an impressive monument, though badly robbed, with almost all of its bank and ditch destroyed. There is also a deep bowl dug into the centre of the mound. The western arc of the bank and ditch remain, allowing the interpretation that this is indeed a ring-barrow. It’s quite miraculous that so much has survived and it was well worth coming here.

Travelling around megalithic Ireland a couple or three questions of the imagined tomb-wreckers have frequently arisen: If you’re going to destroy one of these ancient sites, why not obliterate and eradicate it totally? Why leave the scant remnants, the vague outline, of what once was? Is it because mid-destruction you got visited by some phantom in your bed that made you desist? In the end, it’s possible that you got from here what you came for and sated you said fuckit, leave what’s left and who cares? It’s always puzzling – the disrespect shown is sometimes total, and those sites are lost forever, but it’s at places like here in Ravensdale where enough remains to intrigue and tantalise.

I’ll quote in full the description from the Louth Inventory (copyright Dublin: Stationery Office, 1991): “This court-tomb has suffered considerable damage by blasting, and drill holes for dynamite are visible in a number of shattered stones. It consists of a roughly trapezoidal cairn orientated NNE-SSW, incorporating at its N end the inner end of a broad court and the scant remains of a gallery. The N limit of the court is defined by a facade stone at the W, indicating overall court dimensions of about 5.5m deep by 7m wide. Eight stones mark the inner end of the court, four at the W and three at the E. Two of these form the entrance jambs to the gallery which had at least two chambers. The N chamber 3m long and about 1.5m wide, is delimited by two side stones at the W and one at the E. This is separated from the rest of the gallery by a pair of jambs. Beyond these the continuation of the gallery is represented by a single orthostat at the E side and there is no back stone. A field fence curves around the N and W sides of the monument.”

Blasting? Dynamite? So post 1866 then, and more likely well into the 20th century. We’ve heard of this before, in Carrowkeel, but there’s doubts about that. There it was said to be part of the excavation, far-fetched maybe; here it seems that it was simple destruction and the re-use of the stones and antiquarian niceties be-damned. And yet, as mentioned above, they left us what’s here, unprotected as it is. Bizarre.

The small charms of the court with its almost symmetrical arms; the entrance jambs; behind those their chamber segmenting twins, all speak of a classic multi-chambered gallery, unmistakably an ancient burial place. Almost total wreckage of court tombs is quite common in North Louth and the Cooley peninsula it seems. Contrast that with the near complete tombs Ballymacdermot, Clontygora and Annaghmare in neighbouring county Armagh. I’ve been around these parts a lot in the last few years but had always been put off by that Inventory note but I have to say I’m glad to have finally bit the bullet. It’s not that bad of a site compared to others around, just that you wish they hadn’t trashed the place so badly.

There’s not much positive to say here, except that I’m glad I made the effort. The main remains of the tomb, a photo of which can be seen in the Archaeological Survey of County Louth, are in danger of being lost forever in a dense tangle of hazel, bramble and scrub vegetation.

The plan in the above mentioned book shows an interesting court tomb, with a main single-chambered gallery and three lateral chambers, these last being the only remains in any way visible. Shame really, and not unexpected, but disappointing all the same.

The Spinans Hill Iron Age Hillfort complex comprises two hillforts; one on Spinans Hill itself and the other on Brusselstown Hill, both reputedly encompassed in a lower, massive fortification surrounding the two with a circumference of about 5 kilometres. This, if it exists, would cross 11 townlands. These are, clockwise from the north-west: Eadestown Hill, Ballyhubbock Lower, Ballyhubbock Upper, Castlesallagh, Coolamadra, Brusselstown, Castlequarter, Moorstown, Spinans Hill, Spinans East and Spinans Middle. The summit of Spinans Hill has a cairn cemetery with six cairns and is our target today.

I’ve explored this area quite a bit and always pronounced it as Spinans as in ‘spin’ but meeting a farmer whose land we had to pass through in Castlesallagh he pronounced it as Spynans, as in ‘spine’. The route up is not clear either. I’ve scouted around the west and south of the hill in the past and not found any easy way. Thank science for satellites; there is a track that begins at the 150m contour in Castlesallagh that traverses two fields owned by the aforementioned friendly farmer. It enters state forestry and is public access and brings you high up the hill before you must cross some heathland to gain the summit.

It’s a mostly gentle zigzag climb to the summit of Spinans at 410m over a distance of about 3 kilometres. Doesn’t sound like much but it’s the most strenuous jaunt I’ve done since falling ill last October. Slightly daunted but feeling good, the weather spurs us on – after what seems like 10 months of continuous rain, the sun breaks through and stays warm enough to have us shouldering our jackets. High up on the hill the the track runs out and we cross a steep bit of felled forestry. Then over a fence and onto some wild heathland and we’re almost there.

All the while the views have really opened up – the whole of the Glen of Imaal ranges behind us to the north-east, on over to Lugnaquilla, cloud-free today as it was when we climbed it last June. Keadeen broods over and dominates Brusselstown to our east. The forestry on the spur between the two hillforts doesn’t allow for us to track the massive encompassing fortification, but I think we encountered some of it on the east side on Spinans – low, ragged walling with some very large boulders snaking across the hillside for as far as the terrain allows us to see. Not long after we’re up into the cairnfield.

There are six cairns here, four in Ballyhubbock Upper townland; one, the largest, straddling the townland boundary of Ballyhubbock Upper and Spinans Hill; and the last, the most southerly, in Spinans Hill townland itself. None of which would have meant anything to the tomb builders, for that is what they are, tombs – a small prehistoric cairn cemetery. I get the notion that the trashed main mound, the one that straddles the ‘modern’ boundaries, was the first, and that the satellite tombs followed, possibly centuries after, who knows?

The level of destruction of the main tomb is almost total. There’s what may be the remains of a subsidiary chamber in its north-east quadrant, but any remains of a passage and chamber, for it is claimed to be a passage grave, are long gone. It is recognisable as a large cairn, but only just and is nearly flattened.

The small cairn to its south, in Spinans Hill townland, is being swallowed by the bog – the townland boundary demarcated by a fence crossing the main cairn looking like it separates two separately owned properties, the northern of which has been drained for grazing, the southern left to the wonders of sphagnum. The view across to Baltinglass Hill with its own megalithic wonders is gorgeous.

The northern four Ballyhubbock Upper cairns are all small, with only one showing a diminutive and distinct cist-like chamber at its centre. This has some possible kerbstones, as do two others. Three cairns are in a roughly north-south line, the fourth with the chamber to the east of the middle. They are all quite flat, but as with a lot of these upland cairns, the surrounding terrain has risen since they were first built and that, along with centuries of plundering, means they’re not much to look at, though they were obviously more distinct and proud of the surrounding terrain in the past.

The top of Spinans, with a long and fairly broad north-south expanse, reminded me of the top of Knocklayd (Cnoc Leithid – the hill of the slope or expanse) in Antrim. The ‘cemetery’ is closer to the southern end of this. It’s all said to be within Spinan’s own hillfort which in turn is encompassed in the massive fortifications along with Brusselstown, as mentioned earlier. I really felt that I was back in the game after this successful visit, having been defeated by access issues on more than one occasion in the past and having had doubts about whether I’d ever get back out there again.

Visited 25/7/23

The tomb is now completely inundated with vegetation to the point where it is hidden from the world. Truly shocking neglect of an important heritage site.

Trapped in a small enclosure, surrounded on three sides by a massive quarry, but still worth visiting. The tomb lies in a northern ’spur’ of the field immediately east of the quarry entrance. The structure of the chamber is very evident and was constructed with massive, shaped blocks of stone. This would have been a fine wedge tomb once upon a time – now it seems to be just a forgotten relic, left there only because it’s a ‘protected’ monument. I’m glad we decided to check it out.

A three metre tall, roadside standing stone on the road from Ardara to Kilclooney, just to the south of the Owenea river. A ruined farmhouse stops you spotting it as you travel north to Kilclooney, but glance over your shoulder just before the bridge and it’s unmissable. A large, hefty block of a stone, wonderful and strong and towering, slightly tilting to the west. I wondered how it could have survived standing all these years, and how much of it was below ground.

An almost urban monument, about a kilometre above busy Killybegs harbour. Tucked in under a thorn tree at the bottom of a long driveway. It’s really quite impressive, though low and squat, and it has its own fógra. The modern driveway almost truncates the front of the tomb. The Survey says that this driveway “… is a raised trackway, now disused.” Well, seems like things have changed since publication 20 years ago. No matter – the landowners arrived while we were there and paid us no heed.

Typically aligned WSW-ENE, with the entrance at the west, a displaced septal slab now blocks any view into the chamber from here. The northern side is all grass-covered cairn material, as is most of the southern side, except a gap at the western end which gives a view into the 3 metre long chamber. A single roofstone covers most of this and affords a handy shelter to any small furry creatures in need. I once disturbed a tiny resting fawn along the banks of the Glendassan river while on a bullaun hunt, startling both him and me to the extent that I’m overly cautious now when exploring secluded sites. I needn’t have worried here, though I never got in far enough to be 100% sure.

I think this is a wedge tomb. This despite the lack of any sort of double-walling. Or any ante-chamber or portico. But no worries. I can go with Portal tomb (?), as in the Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume VI, County Donegal. It just doesn’t feel like a portal tomb. Especially in the shadow (or in the light) of what lies a kilometre to the north-east. But then again it might be neither

That said, this is a fine little monument. It’s environment has changed since the publication of the Survey (2002, but the photo may be from well before that) and indeed from Bogman’s visit 11 years ago. It’s in semi-bogland, occasionally used for cattle, about 250 metres north of a small boreen off the Ardara to Kilclooney road.

A single, quite delicate, granite capstone/roofstone covers a small chamber almost 1.5 metres square. It’s set into a mound that rises maybe half a metre above the surrounding terrain. It’s possible that the chamber floor is deeper than these dimensions suggest but I didn’t check, the brambles and other growth discouraging inspection. The gabled backstone is a noticeable attraction and the whole monument offers a serene piece of megalithic charm.

A kilometre south-west of Dunkineely is this mighty fine stone pair. Situated in someone’s garden (if it’s yours, I knocked on your door and got no reply), it’s aligned ESE-WNW, the southern stone 2.3 metres tall, the northern 1.9. It’s situated on the neck of land at the top of the long and thin peninsula that leads down to Saint John’s Point, 8 kms to the south-west. There are fine views west towards Slieve League.

The site from whence the townland gets its name (presumably, as there’s another cairn nearby), about 5 kilometres east of Dungiven and by the side of the road. It’s in a large, narrow, sloping pasture and is quite a presence, though secondary in most of the popular literature in comparison to the denuded Boviel 800 metres north of here. The views south into the Glenshane Valley are fantastic, with the Sperrins brooding beyond in the distance.

This is an example of an almost complete wedge tomb, yet to be plundered, its chamber probably still covered. The facade, facing south-west, and some of the kerbstones are visible, and there seems to be some clearance dumped on top. The road above, the fast-moving and unforgiving A6 main Derry to Belfast road, is hidden from view and you could while away some time here, the sheep timid enough.

This place begs a couple of questions, the first of which is well rehearsed: Is it always important to remember that what we see at sites like Ballyrenan are the denuded, skeletal, interior remains of an earthen and stony mound? And does what remains at Ballyrenan cast doubt on that critical assumption in the first question? Because, like at Ballyvennaght in Antrim, there are two tombs here, separate but part of the same monument. At Ballyvennaght the entrance to the still standing western tomb is to the west, outwards from the cairn/mound – the collapsed eastern tomb is said to have a possible backstone at the west of the capstone so it must have opened to the east, again outwards from the cairn/mound.

At Ballyrenan, both chamber openings face east, meaning the western chamber would face into the mound/cairn. There is the possibility that there was come sort of central court in the intervening space between the front of the western tomb and the rear of the eastern. So was this a mongrel combination of a court and portal tomb? The fact that the western tomb has two chambers could lead you down that rabbit hole. But all of these musings are for later – today the sun is shining and this fantastic monument is right beside the country lane.

The large farm buildings to the west of the tomb do detract from the vibe a bit. The farmer’s there working away and gruffly gives us the go-ahead to park in the driveway. And then it’s just dive right in. It’s not massively spectacular in terms of size but this place has something else, something mysterious and deeply affecting. The thought taken to form the construction and the skill to complete it are impressive. And yet doubts remain – was the western tomb messed about with and re-constructed sometime after the supposed denudation of the cairn/mound? Because there’s a couple or three things amiss, or unique, or odd about the western tomb, aside from it facing into the mound, if there ever was one.

One: the skewed ‘lintel’ over the portal stones, propping up the capstone but also tilting it down to the north as it rests neatly on the southern, but precariously on the northern portal. Two: the stone that rests on the north-eastern sidestone of the eastern, front chamber that juts out by at least a metre and serves to counter the tilt caused by the portal ‘lintel’. The capstone of the rear chamber also rests on this stone. Three: The rear, sealed chamber itself. But sure what am I cribbing about? The easy, quiet backwoods atmosphere allowed us to engage with and immerse in the monument for as long as we wished. I couldn’t resist attacking the ivy that is beginning to colonise the northern portal of the western tomb, the physical action bringing the engagement to another level.

The ‘lesser’ eastern tomb has its own charms too. The stone that I thought to be a recessed, half-height doorstone, but actually a septal stone, is split longitudinally by a seam of quartz, discovered after another judicious bit of ivy clearing. The backstone is there, as are the two sidestones and both portals – all that’s missing is the capstone. The excavators discovered a small, cist-like second chamber at the back of the main chamber but we didn’t notice. If that was the case and it’s also double-chambered, then I would be leaning towards two separate monuments and two separate mounds. Either way it would have been an impressive, close to medium-sized dolmen when complete.

Ballyrenan is another must-see Tyrone site. I’d been in the vicinity a couple of times in the last few years and had neglected it for some reason, probably because of the multitude of other fantastic places in the county. Don’t make the same mistake!

There’s just no getting away from how colossally weird these stones are – you feel that anything that you say about them would not in any way do them justice. It’s a bit like being confronted by Munch’s Scream, a raw shout from the core of us, pointing to our own ultimate annihilation and rendering us silent. They are both ghostly and otherworldly, and weirdly human at the same time, leaving you with your consolatory pondering. I don’t have much else to say, just that you have to see them.

The Lusty More man is obviously the lesser of the two here but, on its own, would have you travelling miles to see it. Faded now, it’s power waning, and placed so close to the ‘Janus’ figure, you get quickly distracted. However, all is not well at Caldragh – to my untrained eye, the Janus figure is beginning to erode badly, almost crumbling in places. I would understand entirely if it was moved indoors. That said, it would be a shame if it happened – the experience of having this place all to yourself, to contemplate the utter strangeness of the carvings, is one of the highlights of megalithic Ireland.

Like the shattered, semi-devoured carcass of a beached whale, the remains of Cavantillcormick dual court tomb sit on a slight, boggy ridge, scattered stones jutting above the turf and what’s left of the cairn in a barely discernible pattern. I’d approached the monument from the neighbouring field entrance about 250 metres to the south-east, gone down into a ditch and clambered up over a wall and then traversed the marshy ground to be confronted by what is a wreck of a tomb that manages to retain just a small bit of dignity.

Thankfully what does remain doesn’t seem in any danger of being removed, for the moment. Much of the poorer land in Fermanagh, and Tyrone for that matter, seems to be in the constant process of improvement. You would hope that any ideas of that here would take the neolithic court tomb into account, but there’s no guarantee of that. Cavantillycormick (probably Cabhán Tulaigh Cormaic ‘hollow of Cormac’s hill’) and its surrounds has a mix of pasturage and a small amount of tillage and land hunger may return.

You could despair at the destruction here but of the remains of the two tombs, the western is better, with a displaced roofstone over its chamber. The sense of tragedy is increased at the eastern remains, two, maybe three stones left standing. Still, there’s a sense here of something that is yet worthwhile. The ruggedness, the barely contained wildness, the raw beauty of the surroundings, and the wreckage of the ancient memorial, all combine into a small celebration of the determination of those who eked out their existence here all the way back six thousand years ago.

The scant remains here lie one and a half kilometres west of the centre of Omagh town. The deep spring green of the fertilised fields is almost off-putting. Ballyrenan is only 12 kilometres northwards so why bother? Nothing much is visible from the road and at first the layout of the SMR map has me confused, almost enough to give up. Then, oriented correctly, I leg it south, uphill and close to the field boundary.

The very box-like/cist-like remains, incorporated into the field bank, get inundated in the summer – now, in mid-April, it’s still difficult to see the southern part of the tomb, vicious, dry brambles from last year still tangling two of the orthostats. They say it’s the possible remains of a court tomb – various scattered stones could be this or that. I didn’t hang about much, Ballyrenan too much of a distraction.

The A505 runs between Omagh and Cookstown and is a fast and unforgiving road. It’s also littered with megaliths to its north and south. Heading west from An Creagán, we pulled up on the northern verge at the bottom of the field. I didn’t wonder who might have been interred in the tomb we were visiting. It was just another ruin, taken in on our way to better places, but revered nonetheless.

It’s tucked in under, and almost incorporated into, an ancient but later field boundary. It’s aligned east/west, with the front at the west. The map says megalith, the SMR court tomb. Any remains of the shallow court are difficult to discern – some of the stones here seem to be dumped field clearance, though the field is little more than a bog now, poorly drained. Mulderg rises to the north-west, scarred terribly with the gouges of quarrying. South-east is a long expanse of heather covered bog.

Most of the gallery sidestones remain, presuming there was only one chamber. A laterally placed stone on the southern side may be a segmenting jamb. There is no stone opposite it at the north so there’s no telling. Two matched stones further east and no closing stone at the rear leads to the conclusion that the rear of a second chamber may have been robbed. Two stones, one splayed out over the entrance stones and another thrown down in the ‘court’ may be roof stones or lintels.

I doubt this place ever fully dries out. It’s not a showy sort of place and is almost stranded there 200 metres from the road as the traffic flies past. I had no huge expectations and I can’t say I was either under- nor overwhelmed. It’s a small relic in an area with many more ‘important’ sites but might be worth your efforts, just bring some wellies.

Anthony Weir, in his Early Ireland: A Field Guide, published in 1980, mentions that this is across the road from the court tomb. He must have seen it in its original environment back then. It’s now in An Creagán Visitors Centre in Tyrone, about 12 kilometres to the south-west.

Behind the centre is a small duck pond and a kids’ playground. To the right of the pond a set of steps rises and brings you on a number of looped walks through the bogland. To the left of the steps, almost tucked into the bank, is the reconstructed tomb.

An extensive excavation was undertaken before dismantling the tomb and if you compare it to the old photograph (link below) you can see that they remained faithful to the original. It’s actually a quite impressive little monument, with all its sidestones, a backstone and two roofstones, with a ruined antechamber, but is, I would imagine, now used as a climbing frame for the energetic sprogs that populate the locale.

West of the village of the same name, down a country lane and up on a drumlin ridge, is this small relic. It’s like the opening of a day, an invitation to explore further and deeper, little over a metre tall, its fallen neighbour invisible to the south. North from the prominence, above the Creggan boglands, the Sperrins float invitingly. The climb has taken the breath out of me on this, my first venture out of the car since Batterstown. I didn’t touch it, satisfied enough to view, and to anticipate what lay ahead.

Right up in the north-east corner of Lower Lough Erne is the town of Kesh. It’s a pretty nondescript place, somewhere I wouldn’t be keen on passing too much time in… except that it has this mighty and mighty fine standing stone to its east in Drumnarullagh townland. It’s visible from the road about 120 metres into the field, well over 2 metres tall and 1.8 metres wide and is quite majestic, all alone there, with not much else around except the remains of a riverside rath about another 100 metres to the north.

This is a sorry sight these days. We drove along the farm track – I knew there were farm buildings close by – and we were ready to ask for permission. We met a farm worker, not the owner, and he said go ahead. The photo on the NISMR shows the lintel and jambstones in a clearing and I had hopes that we were in for a bit of a treat. Alas no – were we here any later in the year it seems that we wouldn’t get to see anything.

The beautiful altar-like entrance, with one metre tall entrance jambstones both flanked by other supporting orthostats, all covered by a lintel, is all that’s visible and identifiable. The whole area is trashy, unkempt and unloved. On the plan at the NISMR, three stones form the southern gallery walls, with a laterally placed stone forming a sill and separating it into two chambers and then a backstone sealing the rear. All this was hard to check out with all the growth and detritus about the place.

It was one of those places that I didn’t feel like hanging around in, frustrated that the landowners so transparently don’t seem to care about the monument on their land, but not wishing to have a confrontation about the neglect.

In a field beside a road with fast moving traffic, I don’t have a lot to say about this as I only viewed it from the roadside. It’s the lesser one of two in the townland, the better one being about a kilometre west of north of here. There do seem to be few socketed stones but any circular form is difficult to ascertain from the bank at the edge of the field. Another of the many stone circles in the Tyrone/Fermanagh/Derry region.

This was a cinch after the mystery tour over at Tawnydorragh 3 kms to the west – you can drive right up to it. The tarmac runs out after about 700 metres from the main road but the track is relatively well maintained and we’re in a 4-by-4 anyway. East of here is the large expanse of Lough Bradan forest, about 20 square kilometres of relatively high ground. The track becomes undriveable at the tomb and continues up into the forest. Judging from the map you could continue along this way and bend around to the south and find Ally court tomb, about 4 kilometres to the south-east as the crow flies.

Scraghy is badly ruined. The collapse of the huge capstone, 2.4 metres by 3.5 metres, has caused most of the chamber stones to shatter and I didn’t even attempt to try and work out which is what, but judging from some of the remains I estimate that the tomb once stood over 2 metres tall. So a serious piece of neolithic construction.

Then there’s the over two metre tall standing stone 7 metres to the ‘rear’ of the chamber. What with there being little evidence of a cairn footprint, this is a peculiarity. It is, on its own, a fairly serious megalith, something that you would go out of your way to visit. Plonked here where it is, it’s quite possible to imagine that it was part of a singular monument, possibly a revetting stone at the back of the cairn.

Thirty metres south-west of the large standing stone is another small megalith, this time a small cist with just two small sidestones still extant. It’s in a very boggy, clumpy area and I did a fairly serious tumble back there. Even with there being very little growth at this time of the year, conditions were not ideal but it was good to find the little guy, huddled away back there almost lost to the world.

Scraghy was well worth a visit. I’m guessing that, in its ruinous condition, it’s not high on many peoples’ priority list. But the area, though very accessible, retains a wild and inhospitable atmosphere, a barely tamed corner of West Tyrone with plenty to keep the megalithic explorer interested.

Second time at Drumskinney, slightly less underwhelmed this time. The polar opposite to Montiaghroe stone circle back down the road, its post-excavation restoration leaves you cold – well you can’t have it both ways, so put up or shut up I guess. But you could have a middle way, which seems to be occurring naturally as mother nature begins to weather the enclosure and moss starts to encroach onto the gravel and the stones begin to look less scrubbed.

It’s always worth remembering on a visit to the Beaghmore complex of circles, rows and cairns, the good fortune that allows us to see and appreciate so much. Once discovered and uncovered it made archaeological and commercial sense to open it up to the public. One can’t help but be reminded of that good fortune on a visit here. Drumskinney, 1.5 kms up the road, seems to have gotten all the attention in this area, leaving the circle here to be lost to the bog.

It’s said that there are “24 limestone boulders protruding above the bog surface to heights varying from 0.05-0.75m”. I made out maybe 8 of these at best today and maybe 3 of the 11 stones said to make up two tangential rows on the eastern arc of the ring. I had hoped for more – yet still the place retains something (is it only because of foreknowledge?), the flattened interior of the circle evident, the vibe of all that wild, boggy, early spring growth creating an energetic, almost electric, buzz. Worth a butchers if you’re visiting the row nearby, but in winter or early spring only.

The most satisfying of the 3 monuments in Montiaghroe that we saw today, this roadside, three-stone stone row is hard to miss if you’re in the vicinity, maybe heading for Drumskinney stone circle up the road. The ground around the stones is boggy and is thought to contain more traces of other arrangements. The stones rise in height from SSE to NNW, the tallest over head height and almost huggable. The views are spacious to the east and south, Rotten mountain a prominent rise of the ground to the north-east.

You could easily give this one a miss and not regret anything. Worryingly, there seems to be even less stones here now than when Nucleus visited 10 years ago. What does remain are 2 stones, one .5 of a metre tall and another, choked and surrounded by a holly tree, 1.4 metres tall. The plans at the NISMR show 4 embedded stones with reports of there having been 6 in the 1940s.

Killadeas modern church and ancient graveyard is a strange little site on the eastern shores of Lower Lough Erne, about 8 kms north of Enniskillen. There are three peculiarities that may be of interest here, and one that’s definitely not for here, but deserves a mention. This latter is the Bishop’s stone, an eerie, four-sided carved, hunched figure, in relief of one side with a face to the north. It’s the best thing here but alas it’s a no-no.

The other three stones are: a relatively innocuous standing stone; a grave slab with dubious cupmarks on its back side and; probably the only true prehistoric relic, a holed stone, with half the hole embedded in the turf. The main A47 Enniskillen to Kesh road is right over the hedge and this is a fast road but there is space to park a car and access seems to be welcomed with signage and a small pedestrian gate.

The Movarran Road in Fermanagh heads north-west out of Drumskinney hamlet at the junction of Montiaghroe Road, about 700 metres south-west of the famous stone circle. It bends north in a pine plantation and heads towards the Donegal border. There is the illusion today that nothing much seems to happen in this part of North Fermanagh – a definite backwater of poor and poorly drained land, sheep farming being the mainstay, some better pasture dotted amongst the ever rising sphagnum moss.

We had made our decision to head directly north for Tawnydorragh and to work our way back down south, slightly distracted by the monuments first at Montiaghroe and then at Drumskinney, before making our way to the fringes of the forest that contained our real target. The townland itself is bordered to the north-west by Lettercran townland, Co. Donegal, not 200 metres from the rear of the tomb. However, there’s a kilometre-and-a-half to traverse before reaching there. The Scraghy road in Donegal looks like it could provide closer access, but the Termon river, which is the border, didn’t seem fordable, so we chose the forest entrance on the Movarran road.

The relief to be out again starts to ease into our spirits as we move deeper into the forest. The track heads up north-east for a short while, then north at a t-junction, twisting a bit and bending back north-west again and we spy a fox not 20 feet away in the scraggy grass. He ain’t impressed by us and skulks up towards the treeline for better cover. The track ends and we’re on dodgier ground as we head north again after another t-junction, but we know what we’re after and we pretty much know where it is, thanks to the tech gods, so our pace stays steady and even quickens the closer we get. And yet the trees are now denser, the old photo from the 70s or 80s that I saw at the NISMR that promised views all around useless.

We end up in a gully between two ridges and it’s obvious that the tomb is on one or the other. Wanting it to be on the northern one, where the sun seems to penetrate the pines, proves to be pointless – it’s on the more southerly. We burst through into the clearing from the east to be confronted by what appears to be a pile of hugely moss-covered stones, with the facade of the tomb to its right. This pile turns out to be sawn logs from the three trees were allowed to grow behind the entrance jambs in the first chamber of the gallery. At this time of the year the sun never gets high enough to penetrate the trees surrounding the clearing, but the benefit of being here now is that the growth has died back enough for us to be able to examine the remains. This is an isolated spot and we got the feeling that nobody had been here for a very long time.

The stones of the monument are satisfyingly blocky and imposing. The court was probably of the shallow variety, though only two of its stones now remain. The lintel that covered the two entrance jambs has fallen backwards into the chamber, partially held up by the southern sidestone and the tree stumps. The jambs are nearly a metres and a half tall, leading into a six metre long, two-chambered gallery. All of the southern rear chamber wall is missing – the second stone of the front chamber is weirdly eroded with runnels and wrinkles. The encrustation of the stones with mosses, grass and lichens at first had me confused – what were the stones holding up the lintel doing in the position of blocking the gallery entrance? And then it became clear with a touch – they’re rotting tree stumps, left there to stop the lintel from collapsing fully.

The rear stone of the gallery is gabled, speculated on as pointing to a corbelled roof – I guess I can go along with that – it’s pleasing either way. The atmosphere here is still and quiet, the glade inviting exploration and contemplation, but I can’t help wishing that the trees weren’t there, opening up the views – the old photo, maybe from the eighties, shows how the tomb was built on the prominence/escarpment, with some cairn kerbing visible at the rear, both to the north and south. I mooched in under the pine trees and saw some of this. My mate Thomas went further back there, down to the Termon river, reporting back that the river was in spate – just as well we didn’t try to get here from that invitingly short way. Tawnydorragh is one of those places that demands a certain level of commitment, rewarding the adventurous with a satisfaction that isn’t replicated by the easier, more accessible sites.

Another Patrick (Patrician) site and another long cairn, scooped out on its longer axis like at the cairn of the cats 2 kilometres to the south-east, only this time a portal tomb, with the main chamber at the east and then two subsidiary, cist-like chambers at the west.

Nestled in a clearing of a pine forest, a monument in state care with a small car park to its south, you get the sense that it’s never going to be high on most peoples’ itineraries, a lonely haven of quiet escape. The northbound track up through the forest is waterlogged and there is a small, forded stream to traverse before the tomb is revealed through the trees.

The cairn heads away eastwards up a slight incline, the two subsidiary chambers at its rear, western end prominent with huge blocky stones. They are both very box-like with no discernible entrance so maybe two cists inserted into the cairn at a later date than the initial construction. It was excavated in 1899 but I’m not sure if the finds were ever carbon-dated in more modern times. Strikingly, the cored remains of the cairn mirror the remains down the road at Carnagat.

25 metres up along the gash in the cairn is a small portal dolmen/chamber. Both portals remain, recessed by about 2 metres from the front facade of the cairn in court tomb fashion. They’re not the most robust portals I’ve ever seen. The northern stone has fallen southwards and rests on the southern stone. Behind them is a large box-like chamber. Presumably there was a capstone over the portals once upon a time, balanced on the sidestones of the very cist-like chamber.

One that got away the last time we were here, back in July last year. We’d managed to get to Glengesh portal tomb about 800 metres ENE. It’s all rolling reclaimed pasture and fairly marginal land hereabouts, with maybe some tillage. 1.2 kilometres west of here at Kilknock is a small hill with a small cairn, said now to be a wedge tomb, which we’ll have to come back to – our attempts today were blocked by some pretty steep and, in places, marshy ground.

Knockennis court tomb is ruined. It’s 4 fields in from the road, along a farm track with two gates. I guess I was expecting something better, an idea planted erroneously a while back. Anyhow, I’m glad I came, the remains still recognisable as the chamber/s of a megalithic tomb aligned classically north-east/south-west with the possible remains of a court at the north-east end. The drystone field boundary wall that passes through it north to south is unhelpful, but does add a certain ambience. Maybe one for the completists only.

There are some places that are just humbling, that evaporate the musty, strangling cobwebs of cynicism and arrogance in a barely noticeable instant, unregistered until you’re back home and reflective, all the while they’re working their silent magic, lending you something you only barely realise you needed. This is one of those places.

It seems that the accepted, received wisdom is that this place was once a ‘temple of the druids’ (whatever that means), visited by that most famous Welshman on his full-on conversion therapy trip/tour of our small island, powering through a major enough set for the local denizens to be convinced to re-name the place in his honour.

Nobody ever completely bought it though, temporary temporality so to speak – but that’s to say that those who came before the saint might have known more, or different, which I don’t believe they did. And not because I feel the need to justify the site or not – no, the place is the place before I say anything about it, fine with or without me and my beliefs, or anyone else’s for that matter.

There’s a car-park east of the site at Altdaven Road with a couple of ‘explanatory’ boards. The map is crude but handy. You descend into Altdaven Woods to the west and then down deeper to the north. There’s no rush but anticipation quickens the step. Straight ahead at the bottom and up along the stairs and path through the trees and along the thin south/north ridge. Good fortune had it that the sun was out, penetrating the tree cover in places, the dappled light adding to the sense of mystery. It’s always a bonus when you have a place to yourself, imagination unleashed.

Not quite at the summit is the chair, it’s back to you behind a pair of trees, standing proud and tall and spooky amongst many other outcrops and boulders. It’s not very deep into the woods and the road is visible from the perch, but we could have been on another planet as far as we noticed. Swiftly we were lost in the wonder of the place, clambering here and there and down to the well. It’s quite steep and vertiginous but no matter, the rag tree adds to the magic.

The flat stone of the ‘well’ has more than just the bullaun in its south-west corner – there’s another large cup-mark towards its centre. There are offerings everywhere – little fern covered niches in the side of the ridge with photos of loved ones and mass cards, the rag tree (ignore the covid face-coverings), coins beside the bullaun and the ubiquitous tea-lights. But none of it matters – the place is a delight, an almost semi-tropical, dripping green wonderland. Spellbound we marvelled, for a while anyway before we let ‘reality’ intrude. We could have stayed all day and not met anybody, but we decided not to.

There’s a couple of plans of this site on the NISMR and combined with the note there, I was expecting something of substance. Alas, what does remain now is almost totally overgrown, even now in January, and impossible to interpret, except for the most southerly stone, said to be a flanker of the south-facing court. Despite that, it was worth coming here, it being one of those barren, wrecked sites that tugs at the heartstrings that you come across regularly and are glad to bear witness to, in the midst of seemingly wilful neglect and ignorance.

Northbound on the R186 in Monaghan turns into Tyrone and the B83 at Tanderagee and the Fury river and you’d barely notice, only you do. The man with the commercial vehicle sales and service business bang on the border must be jurisdictionally flexible, elastic even. From here, as the crow flies a kilometre west, is the cat’s cairn, Carn na gCat. In rough terrain, horse shit in evidence, but no horses, precious little could have been produced since the bog grew.

But the ancestors were here. And they left us Carn na gCat, an almost symmetrical dual court tomb, embedded in a long cairn much of which remains, two metres tall in places. Partially excavated in 1899, it’s a monument in state care now, care which it seems is not easy to give lately by the looks of the growth – fortunately we’re here in winter, and we have our wellies. The fenced in track down to the site is waterlogged, the courts and chambers still not visible.

Rapidly the fences end and you’re in the court of the cats, the almost perfect north-eastern semi-circle entrance welcoming you in. The two Clontygora-esque shouldered stones flanking the jambs are striking – asymmetrical, but sure why not? But that’s where the asymmetry ends – everything after that seems planned, geometric, mirrored, until you emerge at the south-west end and its less spectacular court. Between the two courts are four chambers each roughly 2.5 metres long, two galleries separated by a gap of about a metre between the two backstones.

The four gaps between the entrance and segmenting jambstones are about the same width and each of the four chambers have four sidestones, two on each side, all pretty symmetrical, but no less satisfying for that. It’s in amazingly good condition, only now a tad overgrown, holly colonising the northern side and I’d say the whole thing might get inundated in summer. Some of the roofstones are laying about on the south-eastern flank of the tomb and there’s no sign of any corbelling – which begs the question: if the distance from the floor to the top of the chamber sidestones is never much over 1.5 metres, were the tombs built by small people, or very large cats?

We mucked about here for quite a while in the watery winter sunshine, our first stop on a quick gallop around South Tyrone and we were enchanted, glad to be back out exploring, discovering, snooping and wondering. It was a great place to start at and is definitely worth a visit, only let’s hope that now things are recovering that the DOE tend to the plants that are in danger of taking over the place.

A rival for the more widely known Ardristan, it’s in a relatively isolated spot on the road to nowhere special. You could take it in after a visit to Haroldstwon, 2.5 kilometres to the south-west. It’s not visible from the small road but I accessed it from the west, having fortuitously met the owner who was relaxed about me jumping the gate and having a look.

The base of the stone is quite stout, tapering up to over 2 metres tall and with six grooves. All of the views around the stone are blocked by trees and shrubs so it’s hard to tell if there’s any alignment. Williamstown fits neatly into the group of North Carlow grooved stones.

Late evening on the first day of the year and after two disappointments earlier I pulled the car over in the cul-de-sac on the southern flank of Croghan mountain. Twenty metres into the field is this weird looking stone, about 1.4 metres tall and one of those that looks different from every angle. One side of it is incredibly phallic and looks like it has been split vertically down the middle. It’s well embedded into the ground but not marked on the OS map and I only found it from scouting the SMR at archaeology.ie – I had a sense that this may be modern and erected as a cattle scratching post.

It was an overcast day and I had just scouted around the western reaches of Tomduff Hill in a second vain attempt to find some elusive sites in Killoughternane. I’d earlier also failed to find a stone at Kilbrannish North (I think it’s been removed). Passing over the spectacular road south of Croaghaun towards the pass between Mount Leinster and Slievebawn, I reached the car park at The Nine Stones (S817546) and kept going, assured that the cloud threatening to drop and obscure the summit would hold off.

Disappointed at Killoughternane, I headed back around north-east towards the pass only to see the cloud kissing the aerial and dancing about the summit of Mt. Leinster. The Nine Stone car-park is at around the 400 metre contour, the cairn at 795 about 2 kilometres up the service road, so a one-in-five height gain. Not much but it’s getting late and I’d prefer not to be driving home in the dark and the views will be obscured by the time I get to the top. Hmmmmm… I was tempted to drive, but I don’t think that’s allowed.

So off I set, unfit Andy on another venture that you’d probably pass up if you were thinking properly. Some of it is one-in-ten and some of it is one-in-three and the higher you get the steeper the pain, but don’t give up the game until… And that cloud kept dropping and the wind was whipping up, but those views on the way up: north-east over Bunclody towards the southern Wicklow outliers and almost to the sea off Arklow; it’s not too long before you’re looking down on Slievebawn (520m) with its cairn to the north-west; south-west down towards the mountains of Waterford and Tipperary and Slievenamon; and up and up.

Into the cloud with the wind whipping around the massive mast. The cairn is better than I expected, hollowed out in the centre but with some probable/possible orthostatic stones lying thrown about the place. The note in the inventory reckons that the trig builders were probably responsible for the damage. A lot of the cairn stones are larger than in a lot of other similar sites. They could be the remains of a kerb thrown up onto the pile and the footprint of the cairn extends well beyond this pile and is grass-covered further out. There are a few stones that look like the possible roofstones of a chamber or maybe a passage on the southern arc of the cairn.

I can only imagine what the all round views are like from up here, it being the highest spot for miles. Blackstairs mountain (735m) is six-and-a-half kilometres south of here across the Sculloge Gap but there was no sighting it for me on this day. The return jog back down to the car was pleasant, the sun was sinking and the day was done. Google maps said 80 minutes back to my place.