ryaner

This is well worth the short diversion off the Galway road. I was in the vicinity looking for Toorclogher megalithic tomb (again, without any luck, again) and pulled over to have a look at the modern christian cross. Just behind this is the souterrain entrance. What a pleasant surprise! It’s quite well preserved, the opening in the mound leading into a corbelled chamber. From there a tunnel leads down. Where that leads to is anyone’s guess, I hadn’t got the bottle, or a torch, to check.
So, a souterrain in a mound, that’s at one end of a hill in a parish called Seefin. Hmmm.

I was accompanied down to these stones by Richard Moody, the son of the landowner, an enthusiastic youngfella with a pride about the antiquities on his dad’s land. Thanks Richard!
Seeing them elsewhere on the net hadn’t prepared me for the size of the stones. The 3 basin bullaun is huge and the single at the back of the copse is bulky. Richard said that his dad plants a tree down here every once in a while and that the site used to be a monastery. I’d been over at Brittas earlier where mother nature is beginning to swallow the important bullauns there – it was good to see that these are in good hands in their own protected little area.

Set just slightly south-west of the peak of a ridged hill this artificial mound is well worth checking out. From the top of the mound there are extensive views to the west, north-east to Saggart Hill and Slievethoul, Seefin, Seefingan and Seahan, east over the Wicklow mountains and Poulaphouca reservoir and south towards Carlow.
The main focus seem to be towards the west but that could be because the eastern views are partially blocked by the modern hedgerow. The mound rises to about 2 and a half metres. It’s been dug out at the top. There is a lone stone embedded into the north side of the mound, a peculiarity that gets you wondering.
Access is easy up the public footpath from the Rathmore to Blessington road.

This massive cairn must have been quite something in its day. I can only estimate it at maybe 30 metres diameter. There are quite a few large kerbstones still in situ but it’s almost impossible to get a good idea of what goes where. The south side of the cairn is now part of a field wall, much of which has been built using the cairn material itself.
South-west of the main cairn is a large bundle of field clearance and then what looks like a stone circle or a ring cairn. I wanted to stay a bit longer and explore but the farmer that owns the land was moving horses about and I didn’t feel like intruding any more than I already had.

The tree-line that used to give you your bearings is gone, the trees are down, and there’s an unholy mess to be traversed before you get to the circle. What wonder and joy when you get there though. The circle pulls you in, the views opened up all around. Keadeen is a monster brooding in the clouds to the east. Brusselstown hillfort dominates the north-west.
We had precious little time to drink in the rest of the views: we arrived 5 minutes before a bunch of worshippers took over the circle for their rituals. Were we pissed off? Not half mate!

I heard Christian Corlett mention this stone during a talk he had given on the rock art of South Leinster. Ken Williams had attended the talk and posted the recording on da web. I’ve been curious about the stone for a while, located as it is in the megalithically sparse south central Wicklow mountains. It’s also a place where I spent quite a bit of time as a youngster and it was a great excuse to return to Glenmalure.

I ran a find on cup-marked stones in Wicklow on the archaeology.ie database and sure enough there it was! The placement on the map is bang on though the satellite map is quite a bit older than reality which was confusing at first. Using OS sheet 62, find the first forest track on your left after the sharp right turn coming up the road from Drumgoff. The stone is in the field above the end of this track, a little to the right and about 150 metres away.

There are hut sites and enclosures marked on the archaeology.ie map in the vicinity. These are hard to make out and there’s supposed to be one about 10 metres from this stone. The stone itself is flush with the ground, slab-like, roughly a metre by 500cms. There is one main concentration of cup-marks towards the north-east of the stone. These are placed in more or less a straight line. There are about 10 other cups sacattered around the rock in various states of erosion.

I loved the area, Fananierin mountain to the north-east, the small valley created by it and Slieve Maan to the south-west, Drumgoff brook at its bottom feeding into the Avonbeg. The faint feeling that these cups might be natural solution pits faded as I strolled around in the sunshine, examining the hut-sites and enclosures.

There are 4 bullaun stones in the vicinity of the Moone High Cross Inn that I could find (there may be more), 3 singles and a double. We’d stopped here for a spot of lunch and when I spotted the rough-hewn boulder outside the bar I thought; it couldn’t be – a bullaun stone being used as an ashtray!
On further investigation I encountered the other three around the pub amongst various modern stone circles and follies. I asked the landlady where the bullauns had come from and she said that her husband had dug them out of a wall under the road outside the inn.
These are not on archaeology.ie and I’ve never come across any mention of them elsewhere. Strange.

This is not the most accessible site I’ve been to. I won’t go into the details of how I eventually got here but I can say that all my efforts were very worthwhile.
I was completely taken aback by the size of the monument. The photos I’ve seen of it elsewhere don’t show its scale. I guess I hadn’t really thought about the fact that this is a grave and that the cist would need to be big enough at least to hold an adult human body. The turned over capstone is 2 meteres long on its flat side.
This site is marked as a barrow on the OS maps. On archaeology.ie it’s marked as a cist with a barrow right beside it. I believe that the barrow and this cist are one and the same. There are remains of the mound still surviving.
I loved the views from up here across the Dublin plain. Once again Howth is prominent over to the north-east.

Marked as a Ringfort (unclassified) on archaeology.ie, this is the nearest monument to my house. I’ve been pondering heading up there for a while now and finally went this morning.

The 2nd left turn after Bohernabreena catholic church leaves you on a road above the field with the ‘ringfort’. Down through two small fields and through the tangle of briars and gorse (I wouldn’t attempt this outside of the winter months), the archaeology.ie placement is fairly accurate.

In his book Glenasmole Roads, Patrick Healy has this to say: “Four hundred yards to the east of Bohernabreena House is a fine ring fort in a field of furze with a spring of water beside it. It is 30 yards in diameter and surrounded by a bank. The area inside is levelled and bears evidence of having been tilled at some distant period.” The photo used in the book is nondescript and shows the top of field, not the ‘ringfort’ as captioned.

So what is this? I would describe it as an embanked enclosure of the mini-henge type. The banks rise to about a metre from the north-east back around to the north-west. The northern part of the circle is open and falls away to a depth of about 2 metres, where lies the aforesaid ‘spring’. The most striking thing about the site is the view across the city towards Howth and Lambay. Was it a ceremonial enclosure, a place to view some solar or lunar event?

The interior of the circle is flattened but slopes from south to north and there’s another gap/opening in the bank on the eastern edge where the views towards Howth would have been best.
Was it a habitation site, a so-called ringfort? Maybe, maybe not.

A ruined wedge tomb, but a classic of its type. These squat tombs always remind me of some futuristic tank crawling across the landscape. I’d been up at the court tomb and the cashel and felt up for a further little trek down to what’s call a ‘giant’s grave’ on the old OS maps at archaeology.ie.

Approaching the tomb from above it’s hard not to be disappointed as it’s a tangled mess of brambles and briers that you see at first. However, there’s quite a bit of the structure left. The two ‘portal’ stones are massive and there’s some evidence of the double kerbing at the back of the tomb. Standing a little to the north-west of the tomb you get a really good idea of where they came up with the name for this classification of Irish tomb, its wedge shape revealed as the tomb gradually tapers back towards the chamber.

The surrounding terrain in these fields west of Magheraghanrush Deerpark show plenty of signs of earth working and quarrying that seem to have been undertaken by the people who first constructed the court tomb, then the wedge tomb and the cashel.

South-east of the court tomb and north-west of the wedge tomb, about equidistant from both, this site is on private land. There’s a style in the wall that leads down to it. It’s quite a wonderful place, perched above Colgagh Lough and with views west across to Knocknarea. I could imagine this site as a prized and well defended homestead. The souterrain has been uncovered and it’s wonderful to see the passage snake down into a corballed chamber. The cashel is very ruinous but is one of those places that tugs at your heart, steeped as it is in the mysteries of pre-history.

There’s a track marked on the map that runs north from the road that skirts the south of Slievecorragh. I headed along here past the 1st old farm building until I reached the 2nd ruined farmstead. The bullaun is in the marshy field to the west of this. I spent about 20 minutes scouring this field in increasing frustration and headed down to the rath for a look.

The rath is fascinating, with the deepest fosse I’ve yet seen on one of these. It’s easy to explore at this time of year but would be impossible in the summer months. The inventory says that there’s no sign of an entrance, but they visited in August and I saw a clear entrance in the north-east quadrant.

Heading back into the bullaun field I noticed a cluster of boulders beside a massive gorse bush. The bullaun is here, almost flush with the ground. It’s a little over a metre squared and the basin is one of the smallest I’ve seen, placed centrally in the stone. The sides are sheer, carved directly down into the flat-topped boulder to a depth of about 15 cms.

My fifth visit to this site and the first time there hasn’t been livestock in the field, so giving me a bit of time here.

Site L, the one nearer the main mound, is almost totally destroyed. Four stones remain, a kerbstone and 3 chamber orthostats. None of the passage is remaining, or could it be that it is buried?

Site K is more interesting. Much of the passage is here. There seems to be a sillstone or doorstone at the mouth of the passage. Some of the passage orthostats are collapsed in on their opposite stones. Overall length is approx 15 metres, with a slight widening about midway along. It terminates in an undifferentiated chamber, the backstone of which is missing. The kerb is best preserved on the north-western arc, but there are some stones to the north. One puzzling factor is that an imagined continuation of the kerb arc would not meet the mouth of the passage but hit the 3rd or 4th stone along. Don’t really know if this is significant.

The hillock that both tombs sit on is higher that any of the surrounding terrain, including the ground level of the main mound at Newgrange. Trees and shrubs block this feature when viewed from the road in front of Newgrange. Looking north-west, the main mound at Knowth can be seen in the distance.

It was very windy here today and my hands were freezing as I took photos. It would be lovely to sit here on a sunny summer’s day, drinking in the atmosphere. It’s hard to say what sense of place you get here, knowing that big brother is only yards away. None of the previously mentioned decorated stones were visible, though some of the passage stones seem to have very worn and vague pick-marks.

Nobberbeg townland, next (unfortunately) to Muff townland, is at the back of Gallow’s Hill, north-west of Nobber (An Obair) town in north Meath. On the old OS maps at archaeology.ie this site is marked as St. Patrick’s stone. The site sits at the edge of a ridge that falls away to its south.
There is an old cross base here, beside which sits this interesting bullaun. It’s one of those kneeling bullauns, both basins of which break the side of the stone. One holds water in its bottom, the other unable to do so. On the map mentioned above there is a second bullaun marked. I think I saw this too but it’s been smashed up, much like this unkempt and uncared for site.

This is well worth checking out, if only because there are many different sites of archaeological interest in close proximity.
I came here with the bullaun in mind, having seen it on archaeology.ie. It’s about a metre and a half long by half a metre wide and has one shallow basin. It’s now cemented into the side of a shrine to St. Brigid which in turn sits beside a dry holy well.
I had a delightful companion during my time here – a gorgeous little puppy that followed me down from the house where I attempted to ask for permission to visit the well.

A huge barrow in the grounds of Punchestown race-course, it’s close on 30 metres in diameter. The central mound is quite low but may have been taller in the past as the ditch and bank are of such a large size, the top of the bank being close on 3 metres above the bottom of the ditch in places in the northern arc of the barrow.
Punchestown race-course is popular with dog-walkers and access is through the gate-style at the entrance, opposite the field with the race-course standing stone. I arrived here late in the January evening and there were quite a few people about, but none in the vicinity of this forgotten monument. This could be a showcase part of the grounds with a little bit of tidying, but like so much of our ancient heritage, is now willfully neglected and overgrown.

We headed up from the road at the south-eastern end of Brusselstown. 100 metres into the field are the remains of the outer ramparts of the huge Spinnan’s Hill/Brusselstown complex. The Arch. Inventory of Co. Wicklow shows a line about 5 kilometres in circumference surrounding the two peaks and their respective hillforts. This line of rubble, at this point, is very low, less than a metre in height but with some larger stones standing proud of the remains. It’s hard to make out from here how much of the rest of the outer ramparts remain, and even from above it remains difficult to do so.

We headed up and entered the fort. What looks like chevaux de frise is in fact the old fortification of the hillfort. The landowners have built their field boundaries from this, and at this section in the south-east the wall is inside the ramparts. At the western end the field boundaries twist snakelike over the ramparts and are both inside and outside the old fortifications.

The interior of the fort has 3 large natural outcrop pinnacles. All 3 of these look to have been quarried and all 3 also seem to have been superb lookout points. There are many places showing the remains of structures, but none that we could find make any sort of layout sense.

It was very windy here today and we arrived about 2 hours before the expected rain. We could make out Lugnaquilla and had a commanding view of the whole of the Glen of Imaal. Keadeen to the east looks worshipful, towering above the hillfort and dominating the atmosphere. Spinnan’s Hill, Brusselstown’s twin hillfort, is now covered by forestry, but may be worth a look sometime soon.

There’s just a thin strip of trees surrounding the circle now. The cleared area to the north is well re-planted and the young pines are about a foot high. I looked down on Boleycarrigeen from Brusselstown hillfort today and wondered why they haven’t cleared the trees from around the circle. They’re of the same vintage as those already cleared. Some of the trees east of the circle in mulchy ground have fallen during the recent storms.
The very dead bracken around the stones took us about 5 minutes to flatten. The bank around the circle is easy to see at this time. The quietness here always brings peace to the soul an we had our lunch just outside the circle. Boleycarrigeen remains, huddled snugly in its small copse, waiting to be revealed by the tree-fellers. Let’s hope they’re very careful if and when they do decide to clear here.

We started our jaunt from the place where the Wicklow Way crosses the Tibradden to Glencullen road. It’s about a 200 metre ascent along a 2 kilometre walk. The first part is quite steep but gets gentler as you move away from the forestry and head east-north-east along the ridge.

This passage grave has been calling me for quite some time. I’ve eyeballed it from all over the city since reading about it here and elsewhere and thought – I have to head up there. The mound is still quite intact but is being eroded at a rapid pace what with all the hill-walkers and day-trippers. There’s no trace of a kerb and the supposed passage could just be an indentation left by continuous erosion.

The views from here are some of the best I’ve seen. The bay looks better here than from any place I’ve visited, its jaws gulping their way out into the Irish sea. Almost directly north Lambay is visible and it’s said that you can see the Cooleys and the Mournes on a clear day, though not today, 6/1/08.

A multi-faceted, multi-period site, this is easy to find at the side of the road at Shirke Crossroads. According to the Arch. Inventory of Co. Laois there are a henge, a standing stone within the henge, a norman motte and bailey within the henge, a mound that could be a barrow, 4 fulachtaí fiadh, a possible megalithic structure and several urn burials.
The standing stone within the henge is a conglomerate, rising to above 2 metres. The henge itself is very impressive, with an outside ditch and massive banks, 96 metres E–W and 90 metres N–S in diameter.
There were many thrown down stones on the western side of the monument, any of which could be the remains of the ‘cromleach’ that Ledwich described in 1803.
The whole of the site is terribly overgrown and could do with a clean-up. Walking north to the church I was struck with the views from this prominence – the Slieve Bloom mountains dominate the northern horizon.

These were a nice surprise! I had about an hour to kill before lunch at a friend’s nearby and decided to check out the ruins of the church and cross. There’s a holy well marked on the map beside the church and looking at the field that the well is in I noticed 2 stones that had been left behind from a fairly thorough field clearance. Why? Well, because they’re bullaun stones.
One, the smaller of the two, has 2 fairly regular-sized basins, the other, a large conical beast has just the one, massive and carved into the slope of the stone. A pleasant surprise on the 2nd last day of December ‘07.

There’s a track on the map that runs south-east from the road across the saddle between Verschoyles hill and Knockannavea up into the forestry on Knockannavea. South of the track is this supposed barrow cemetery. I searched the vicinity and found some vague remains. It seems that these barrows have long since been ploughed away, a pity really as the site itself is quite beautiful.

I visited this site after hearing Christian Corlett say there was a carved stone found here in his recent lecture on rock art in South Leinster. It’s marked on the map as a barrow but Christian calls it a mound and says, given the carved stone, that it’s a possible passage grave.
The mound is surrounded by a fenced in circular area which in turn is surrounded by a quarry/gravel pit. The topsoil has been removed right up to the fence and there are large, deep gouges in the surrounding terrain. The mound is roughly oval in shape and possibly 3 metres high and about 25 metres in diameter along its longer axis and about 20 on the narrower. There are quite a few smallish boulders lying on the mound, none of which I could see were carved.
The situation of the mound on flat terrain, west of the river Barrow, shows extensive view across to Mt. Leinster and the Blackstairs and south to Brandon Hill.

A very flattened barrow, about 20 metres in diameter and with low remains of its bank and ditch. Very curious as to why the OPW felt it needed 3 fograí.

Beside the road and with an enclosing fence right up to its bank, this barrow is about 30 metres in diameter. There is a strange collection of large stones in its centre that may be field clearance or could signify some sort of chamber.

In a green area just off the Stillorgan dual carriageway, this is a great little stone. Over a metre tall, it sits north of a few tennis courts in an area popular with dog-walkers. The limestone rocky outcrops in the field are a surprise: how they have survived, and how the stone has survived, all the ravages of house and road building is a miracle.

A great, semi-buried stone, grafittied and otherwise ignored. The basin is huge, after the soil and broken glass have been removed. Bullauns always fascinate me; how were the basins carved? How long did it take? Were they worked with a denser, harder stone? As is mentioned in Monumental About Pre-historic Dublin (I wouldn’t have found the stone without it!) it would be great to see it raised and the basin enabled to collect rainwater again.

I started at the road (S767536) where there is a forest track and headed up. It’s about a 150m climb but not too strenuous until you have to negotiate some field walls at the very end of the track. Over 2 walls and you’re in the field that reaches the summit and the hillfort.

There are a few small hills like this to the west of the Blackstairs. One is at Rathgeran with its hilltop enclosure and its wonderful rock art. You can see Rathgeran from here. Presuming that the hillfort on Knockscur is of iron-age vintage, and given what’s at Rathgeran, I scoured the rock-littered slopes west and below the hillfort in a vain attempt to find some carved rocks.

The enclosure itself is very visible at this time of year. The bracken is dying away leaving the rubble ramparts visible, especially on the western side with its curious (to me) entrance. The circle of the fort is split by more modern stone wall field boundaries, but the ramparts follow on into the neighbouring fields, though these are overgrown with gorse and hard to make out.

There is no date given for a site visit in the Arch. Inventory and their entry is taken from ‘Carloviana 1986, 9’, leading me to believe that the site has never been properly surveyed.

Tucked in beside the road, this cairn is in a sad and sorry state. Many trees are now growing on the mound and a lot of the structure has been robbed/quarried away. There is evidence of some kerbing in the south-west quadrant. The area is such a mess that it’s hard to tell which are original stones and which may be field clearance.

What a beautiful place. I sat on a kerbstone at the south-west of the monument while the sun burned away the morning mist. I’d driven up along the rutted track from the east of the hill and got to the gate with the sign. I’d called the number 5 times without any joy before deciding to head over to the tomb anyway.
I stayed for about half an hour, almost forgetting the intrusive noise from the farm machinery and barking dogs – somebody had unleashed the hounds of hell and they marauded all over the heather-covered hillock at the north end of Harristown.
The small undifferentiated passage tomb is in reasonably fine condition. The kerb remains around much of the monument. Two roofstones remain, one over the chamber and one near the beginning of the passage. There is a sill-stone at the beginning of the passage. The stone reminded me of the stone found in other monuments in the south-east. What seems to be a thrown down roofstone rest between the kerb and passage just behind the chamber.
This was a beautiful place to pass the time. The only let-down was that the sun didn’t burn the mist away quickly enough and I couldn’t take in the full breadth of the expansive views.

In the large garden of a large house on the south-eastern outskirts of Waterford city. There was so much growth on the stones that it was hard to make out what was what. One large capstone (?) rests on a metrre-high upright. Resting beside these was a large block of reddish conglomerate stone. Maybe with the forthcoming book about the area the owners might clean up the site.

The mound is roughly 3 metres high and fenced in by the farmer. It’s cut on the north side by the hedge and road. To the south the field slopes down to a small strteam. There were some large stones thrown onto it in the western quadrant – these could be field clearance but looked distinctly structure-like.
It’s marked on the OS map but not mentioned in the Carlow Inventory. Like a lot of the sites I saw this weekend, it could do with a clean-up. To the north-east is Moylisha wedge tomb and the cairn on Aghowle Upper.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much of this monument remains. Roughly circular, its about 150 metres in diameter. There are many gaps in the bank, the largest of which is on the east side where a modern farmtrack has cut into the henge. It’s hard to tell which, if any, of the gaps are originals. The best preserved portion runs from roughly north-west to north-east and the bank here is about 2 metres high.
Kilbrew henge is on the slopes of Windmill Hill and has a sister henge higher up the hill about 400 metres to its north-east. The site at Kilbrew seems to have been chosen for the natural platform that it rests on with the ground falling away very steeply on its southern end. There are the remains of a large house built inside the henge in the north-west quadrant.

This is a site that would bear further investigation. The top of Barretstown Hill is surrounded by a ditch and bank close on a kilometre in circumference. The bank and ditch are overgrown with hawthorn trees.
An archaeological survey of Co. Kildare mentions four round barrows here but it’s hard to make them out. Are they inside the enclosure? Would that be likely, presuming that the enclosure was a habitation site? They’re marked on the map as being at the south end of the top of the hill and this puts them inside. However, there are a great many earthworks to the north of the hill, scooped out quarries with small, barrow-like mounds that may be of a more modern vintage.
Barretstown Hill is the highest point for miles around and would have been easily defended. So where are the barrows?

What seems to be a very common type of standing stone around here, it’s about one and a half metres tall, very square from its base to almost its top where it seems to have been broken.

There are 6 barrows marked on the map just west of Killucan. They range across 4 townlands: Sarsfieldstown, Rathwire Upper, Lisnabin and Rathnarrow. The large one depicted here is just over the fence beside the R156 in Sarsfieldstown. It’s the biggest barrow I’ve ever seen, flat-topped, about 45 metres long, 10 metres across and rises to about 2 metres. Erosion from cattle grazing has exposed some of the mound. From its top you can clearly see the much smaller barrow in Rathwire Upper about 400 metres to the north-north-east.
The other four barrows are not visible from here, 3 on a spur between 2 hillocks in Lisnabin and Newdown at Rathnarrow and 1 on the peak of Lisnabin itself.

This was a long, arduous trek, began at Raheenakit and along the Wicklow Way. The forest tracks are fine, but the last 80 metres ascent through the heather, gorse and tumbledown mess nearly did me in.

The cairn is being reclaimed by mother nature, with it’s lower sections covered in peat. It’s very roughly 20 metres in diameter with cairn rubble showing in a few places at its top.

The gorgeous views on a sunny mid-September evening made the trek worthwhile: south-west to the Blackstairs, north to Keadeen and Lybagh, and south-east into Wexford. I could see the sea off Gorey. Directly west you can see forever.

I was able to pick out the wedge tomb at Moylisha to the south-east. Descending down through the ruined pine plantation I went arse over tit and nearly broke me wrist.

If there is a standing stone here it’s buried deep in impenetrable pine woods.

A stone may have once stood on Cullentragh mountain, but alas no more. There were one or two candidates for the former standing stone but I could scarcely be bothered after the hike and the disappointment. In fact, I’m really very doubtful that there ever was a standing stone here. However, the views up here are stunning.

25/8/07
Leitrim bullan rests flush with the ground at the back of the cemetery, lost and ignored. There’s two massive army caterpillar diggers parked up about 200 metres away. These have been in action near the stone and you can see the track impressions on the stone. So, it’s only a small, single basin bullaun, less than a metre square. It’s probably not that important in the bigger scheme of things – who cares?

25/8/07
It’s hard not to stop by here when I’m in the vicinity. Late August is probably not the best time of year though, what with all the summer growth. The track to the main 2 bullauns is worn, but not hugely; somebody visits these powerful stones now and again. These 2 could easily get overgrown and ‘lost’.
Finding the double and the single in the forestry plantation to the east is a challenge. Head high heather blocks you. The fifth one, a double, broken through its larger basin, is moss-covered; there’s also grass coming up through the fracture.
If the little cottage beside this place ever came up for sale…

I went clomping through the heather and peat trying to find this, a “circular cairn of granite and some quartz (diam. 9m, H 0.5-1m)” but failed to find it.

The western cairn of a pair said to be 450m apart, follow the track all the way from the cul de sac at S947978. Ask permission at the farmhouse as the track, a right of way, crosses this farmers land. He’s very friendly!
The track follows the treeline for some way then cuts north into a high meadow studded with gleaming quartz. Keep going and the cairn appears around a few bends that lead you east.
The cairn has been robbed out but the rubble that remains shows quite a few flat slabs. It’s roughly circular and about 18 metres in diameter. The views onto Church mountain, Corriebracks, Sugarloaf, over to Keadeen at the south, and south-west into south Wicklow and Carlow are fantastic, probably the best reason for coming here!

Fields should not be this muddy at this time of year (august 07) but that aside, I was well surprised to see that this has its own little fógra. I’d say this is a bowl barrow, but with very little evidence of a ditch. It’s about 10 metres in diameter and rises to about 2 and a half metres high. Most of the views surrounding here are blocked by field boundaries and trees.

Cross over from the ‘cairn’ on Prince William’s seat, down the track to a bog and up again to this very peculiar, altar-like outcrop. It stands proud of the surrounding peat to about 4 metres tall. It sits there brooding like some broken-down tank or an exhausted rhinoceros, completely out of place on these wind-swept hills. And yet, where else would it be? The only comparison I can think of is The Cheesewring, with its eroded formations.
There is one stone, the top stone, that seems to have been worked by human hand, with a shallow mini-bullaun. It’s quite an eerie place. My dog got quite antsy while we were here but that may have been because he smelt the local goats. Was this a ‘sacred’ place to the ancients? It affords the same type of views that Prince William’s Seat with its dubious cairn has, though there is very little else of megalithic significance hereabouts.

I started at the car-park at O185168 on the Glencree to Enniskerry road where the Wicklow Way crosses and heads around Knockree. Follow the Wicklow Way until you get above the forestry line and turn left. This track heads off south around the summit of Prince William’s Seat but there’s a right turn after about 200 metres. Take this and head up.
I’m not too sure about this being a cairn. The trig point in cemented onto an outcrop. There are very few signs of cairn rubble, just some large stones of the same conglomerate as the outcrop.
The views from here are spectacular, south and west over to Kippure, Tonduff and Djouce, east to the 2 Sugar Loafs, north-north-east to Howth and north down the Glencullen valley.

A magnificent stone, hidden and neglected in the wall of a large field. The two conjoined bullauns are some of the deepest I’ve seen. Full of water and leaf mulch, I was only able to test their depth by using a stick of about a foot long. This sunk all the way ‘til it disappeared. The Arch. Inventory of Co. Carlow describes the bullauns as ‘conical’, putting one in mind of the nearby stone in Myshall graveyard.

Probably the strangest site I’ve visited. There may be a path up to here from Hollywood village but I couldn’t find one (I didn’t look too hard). I parked at the junction at N952035 and headed up the steep way.

This is on the St. Kevin’s Way and that may account for the sculptured chair (with teddy) that I encountered on arrival. St. Kevin’s Chair and St. Kevin’s Bed are features below in Hollywood glen. At first I thought that someone had brought up an ordinary wooden chair in a kind of Flann O’Brien gesture, but no, this is actually a metal chair, sculptured and painted so well that it wasn’t until I touched it that I realised that it was metal. It’s placed on a promonotory below the cairn with fantastic views to the south-west and west. Wacky!

On to the cairn itself. It’s been robbed out. It’s quite large, 25 metres on the longer axis with evidence of multiple cists/burials. There’s a little church-like structure on the west end, constructed with no little skill in what I reckon is an attempt to christianise the site. Near the centre is what I take to be the remains of a central burial with a large capstone. This has been robbed out and thrown back together again.

The all round views from up here are great. Poulaphouca reservoir glistens to the north-east, you can see the ESB power-station on Turlough Hill to the east, Church mountain with its cairn is to the south and the mad expanse of west Wicklow and what seems like all of Kildare, Offaly and Laois are to the west.

Thanks to the farmer for his friendliness and permission to visit the site.
It’s said to be a four-poster but there are many other stones close to the 4 main ones. I was struck by its situation on a small hillock that’s surrounded by about 8 other hills that are nearly equidistant, except for Carrickbyrne Hill that dominates the SSE skyline.

A bowl barrow. It seems to have been excavated or quarried relatively recently. There is a huge gash in the mound, right down to what looks like a burial pit. This quarrying/excavation seems to have been conducted in the last 10 years. The way the mound has been left leads me to believe that this ‘work’ was done unofficially.
The fosse and bank are clearly visible on the east and south quadrants. The mound would once have been over 3 metres tall. Many beech trees were planted on the mound, some still clinging precariously on to the remains.