A beautiful bullaun stone, dumped into the field boundary and neglected. It looks to have once been earthfast, though that’s hard to call as it’s so overgrown. It’s definitely not in its original position as the basins are all on a slope, with one end of the stone a metre above the other. There are 3 large basins in a diagonal line on the metre and a half square stone. This would be a prize bullaun elsewhere but now rests sadly, ignored at the edge of the field.
ryaner
Easy to find to the right just inside the gate of the old cemetery in Myshall. Both bullauns were full of detritus, one with stones, a plastic bottle and some broken glass. It seems that the graveyard is reasonable well tended but the weird stone with the holes in it is ignored. Other photos elsewhere don’t show the concrete setting.
Both bullauns are very deep set, about 25 to 30 cms, and almost inverted cones.
During the spell of dry weather earlier in the year a massive fire consumed a lot of the vegetation on the southern slopes of Piperstown Hill. I’d passed by a couple of times and wondered if the fire had burnt back any of the gorse and heather at the cairns. I got my answer today. Yes… and it also exposed what I believe to be 2 more, unmarked burial mounds/cairns! That makes 5 in this small area, 4 in the north-south alignment and a small one to the west of the largest, what I once thought of as the middle cairn.
The 2 ‘new’ ones are barely visible, both about half a metre proud of the surrounding terrain, but I suspect there is much more under the peat.
The bottom cairn of the 4 aligned cairns finishes just above a natural platform. From here, the views west across the Glenasmole valley and up to Ballymorefin, Seahan and Corrig are splendid. South there are two very deep cuts in the horizon, one where the Dodder falls towards Glenasmole, the other called Cot Brook, a stream that meets the Dodder at Cunard.
Yet another cup-marked stone at Drummin. The cups in this one are less eroded than both Drummin II and Drummin III, but not as well preserved as Drummin I. It’s a large earthfast boulder, hidden in the gorse 40 metres or so west from Drummin III. There are about 15 cups in all, some more eroded than others.
I was surprised at the fine condition of the barrow. Called a bowl barrow in the Wicklow inventory, you can drive to within 100 metres of the site up the track, across the commons from the Kilmacanogue to Roundwood road. The fosse and bank are still very visible and the central mound is now home to many rabbits. The Sugar Loaf broods to the north-east.
12/5/07
The clearance of the chamber continues. Last time I was here (24/12/06) I had to lay flat and shimmy down from the rubble in the chamber to get access into the passage. Not any more. The entrance has been cleared, exposing the sillstone that separates chamber from passage. Even more of the roof rubble has been cleared from the chamber itself, revealing more of the giant capstone and some more of the collapsed corbelling. All this moving of stones, while it exposes more of the chamber, cannot be good for the structure. The collapse of the roof had settled for god knows how many years and seems to have supported parts of the chamber that may well collapse if any more is removed. Some of the lintels and roofstones around the chamber entrance are looking in a very precarious condition. While the clearing of the stones opens up the monument that bit more, the inexpert nature of the ‘excavation’ doesn’t instill confidence. Lighting fires on the old capstone can’t help either.
Said by some to be a passage grave, this robbed out mound is oval in shape and shows no signs of a kerb. It’s about 200 metres east-south-east of the excavated henge of the same name that has been cut into by a modern factory.
It’s roughly 25 metres on its long axis and has a dug out depression at its eastern end.
There are ten red dots on Sheet 36 denoting this barrow cemetery. Three of them are beside the road with two on the road itself. The other five are in an arc aligned roughly south-west to north-east. To be honest I wasn’t expecting to find much and I wasn’t greatly disappointed. I did however locate the remains of about seven of the barrows. They’re quite hard to make out and most of the mounds have been flattened, but a little scouring shows plenty of evidence of circular banks and interior fosses. The one mound that remains to any great height is the most northern one. It’s about 2.5 metres high, roughly circular.
Slieve Breagh falls dramatically away to the north-west from this place and the views across Meath, Monaghan and Cavan and north into Armagh and beyond are spectacular. There are many peaks away on the distant horizon. A quite lonely and windswept place but worth the trip on this cloudy, windy and sunny Irish day.
The entrance to this souterrain is in the ditch by the side of the road. It’s marked on the map well into the field and the farmer had just dug a hole in the vicinity of the mark so I thought this must be it. Happily the farmer happened by and showed me where to look. He said that I could crawl in, that there’s “a big cave in there”. “Thanks all the same,” said I.
The lintelled entrance is to the south. Immediately, after about a metre, there’s a sharp right turn and the souterrain heads down. It looks like an ideal spot for a badgers lair and I had no torch. I would love to come back here with some proper kit and a companion less claustrophobic than I.
In her book “Newgrange and the Bend of the Boyne” (Cork University Press) Geraldine Stout has this marked on both of the overview maps of Brugh na Bóinne, and yet there is no mention of it in the index and I haven’t come across it in the text, so far. I did see it mentioned somewhere else but can’t remember where. Having bought Geraldine’s book I decided to see if I could find anything.
I approached from the eastern end of the complex and just where the bend of the road turns sharp right on the long approach up to Dowth there’s a small wall. Over this and about 100 metres further west are 2 bowl-like arenas, like hollowed out inverted mounds. Was this where the stone circle once stood? The one further west seems like the most probable. It has 2 large fallen stones that may have come from the circle. One, the northern of the 2, is huge and has definitely been worked/shaped, though, from what I remember, the stones were blasted when the circle was destroyed. The other lies to the south and is thinner and smaller, about 2 metres long.
I’ve had limited experience of stone circles so I don’t know if I’ve found the precise location. The bowl like depression is about 10 metres deep on its southern side. The floor opens out to the north and drops off until it reaches the modern road about 8 metres below.
It was hard to tell what this is due to the livestock time limitations I had here. The large capstone says a portal tomb, but this stone could be a roofstone from a wedge tomb. As the tomb is in court-cairn country, it just might be so, but there’s no evidence of a court.
The mound that the burial chamber is in is completely overgrown. It stretches back from the chamber by about 20 metres and contains cairn material at the flatter back end. There are kerb-like stones on its eastern side, so are we talking a passage grave?
Lost and forlorn in a hedge and ditch are these sad remains of a wedge tomb. I was brought up here by the farmer who owns the land and who has a keen interest in all the historic and pre-historic features of his area.
There’s not much left to see. Two stones are set into the ground with the remainder tossed about in a jumble. The whole structure measures just 6.5 metres by about a metre and a half.
The site is on an an undulating ridge, aligned south-east to north-west, north-west of Rath Lugh. The cleared area is roughly 120 metres wide by 600 metres long. This whole area has had its topsoil removed down by about half a metre, revealing a sandy layer.
At the north-west end, at the highest point of the area, there is what looks like a mound, containing rough cairn-like stone. It’s one of three smaller areas that are co-ordoned off and under excavation. South-east of this is a massive plastic-covered rectangle where the ‘woodhenge’/timber circle has been found. Just east of this is a long line of test trenches, presumably part of the promised exploratory trenches that were dug ‘every 20 metres’ all along the 59kms of the motorway.
Slightly north of east of here, and about 150 metres towards Rath Lugh, is what the Sunday papers are calling ‘a high status burial chamber’. It’s circular, with an inner trench/ditch of about 2 metres. I guess there’s still quite a bit of work to be done in and around this site and the ditch may not really be that deep when the remaining covering sandy soil is removed.
This barrow is surrounded by a fence that has been placed right up to the bank. It’s circular and roughly 30 metres in diameter. The stone and earth bank and the inner ditch are quite well preserved though partially destroyed in the north-east quadrant. The top of the mound, on which has been placed an official fógra, rises to about a metre and a half. The monument can be reached from the track to the north of Rhode village.
I’ve been at Mount Venus twice before and both times have left feeling puzzled. The massive capstone lies against a single large upright and there has always been precious little else to see due to a riot of vegetation. Doubts persist in the literature as to whether the capstone was ever fully raised or if this was a project begun and then abandoned, a bridge too far so to speak.
I stopped by the tomb today to see if I could clear up some of this confusion for myself. I had hoped that the growth was not as bad as usual given the time of year. I was even optimistic that someone might have cleared around the tomb as the last time I was here somebody had cut the elder tree at the tomb’s north end. No such luck, but the new year’s growth was only just taking hold and I was able to get a much better view of the monument after a half hour’s toil. Brambles, hawthorn, nettles and holly; my unprotected hands are showing the signs.
One of the problems I have in describing this tomb is that I don’t know the front from the back, where the supposed portal was, was there ever a doorstone etc. I’ve always thought of the front of the tomb as being the sloping capstone, the east side/end. I’ll use that as a guide.
I had never seen the stone at the front of this image megalithomania.com/show/image/5326 before. I was able to uncover it today. It’s almost 4 metres long by a metre wide and looks to have been dressed. What it’s purpose was, what part of the structure it belonged to, is beyond me. At the south end of the tomb is a stone with similarities to the one that remains standing. Did this once prop up the south end? I didn’t get a good look at it as I had had my fill of bashing brambles back for today.
Right in the centre of the stones is a large hawthorn tree with a parasitic holly tree at its side. A modern pit has been dug around the tree and is filled with plastic and glass bottles. I wondered why this site doesn’t have an official fógra beside it. A little time and a chainsaw would expose more of the monument and aid us in knowing a little more about what went on here back in the neolithic. There is more to find out from a survey of the site. I was left feeling slightly less puzzled when I took my leave. I’ll be back... with a machete!
There are 3 cairns marked on OS sheet 62 at Colvinstown Upper. The Arch. Inventory of Co. Wicklow says they are all on a steep NW facing slope of the hill. Well, one is and the other 2 are more west-south-west. The largest and best preserved (the main one of this site) was not located by the inventory people back in 1989 due to heavy forestation. No more. The forestry have been at their task and in the process have made an unholy mess, practically destroying the 2 lesser cairns. They are a shambles and a disgrace. Would they do the same to Kilranelagh graveyard at the western foot of the hill?
We approached the scene of devastation from the tracks on the northern side of the hill, after spending a while at Boleycarrigeen stone circle. We circled around to the south first and spotted the main cairn up above the gorse line. It’s a long cairn, about 25 metres on it’s longer axis. It looks to have been robbed out quite some time ago, with some of the structural stones of its burial cist visible in a depression on its eastern side.
The views from here to the flat plain to the south and over west to the Pinnacle on Baltinglass Hill are lovely. I couldn’t help wondering at the significance of the placing of all 3 cairns, with the passage grave cemetery on Baltinglass Hill such a prominent visual feature.
The other 2 cairns are now a shadow of their former past. The most southerly and easterly, Colvinstown Upper III, may not last much longer. It’s a flattened dumping ground. Colvinstown Upper II shows some remains of its burial cist, but the forestry made a grievious error years back when they decided to plant pine trees in the mound.
All the forestry hereabouts has been cleared recently, and though not all the damage to these cairns is of a recent vintage, major damage has been caused in the last year due, I’d guess, to a callous indifference and an ignorance of our ancient past. This even goes so far as planting new trees on each of the 3 cairns.
These 2 bullaun stones are recorded by Price and he gives them separate letters in his recording system. They’re about 60 metres up-river from the caretaker’s house. You can’t really miss the larger one of the 2 which is in the middle of the river (actually, if you’re like me, you might). Why the stone is in the river is a great puzzle to me. My companion today seemed less confounded. The stone screams ‘Christian’ to me and, theorising only, might have had some sort of baptismal function and probably once stood with its bowl on the topside. The bullaun on the bank is much smaller and is more typical of the single basin bullauns that are found in abundance in Wicklow.
In the base of the wall about 10 metres from the gate of Glendalough Cottage, I’d been here before and totally missed this one. As stated, it’s a bit away from the gate and that’s how I didn’t see it (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it). Price records another one just inside the gate but we didn’t find it. It could be that it’s covered up or has been removed up to the house.
This is signposted off the trail as a ‘Boulder Burial Chamber’. I’m a little dubious about that classification. There are many large sandstone erratics in Burren (some of them signposted as well), some having landed on pavement similar to the stones propping this monster up. A little research is needed to see if a burial was actually found at this site.
The stone itself must be at least 50 tons. It’s so heavy that the corner stone holding it in place is not just fracturing so much as shattering slowly. There are more stones at the back of the ‘burial’ that seem to form a sort of cist. Hmmmmm...
A truly impressive bullaun stone, nestled in against a field boundary and a stone’s throw away from the shore of Lough Macnean Upper. Park at the modern graveyard 100 metres east from the signpost to Killinagh church and walk back. The stone is past the church and old graveyard down near the shoreline.
There were some ‘offerings’ placed under the turnstones in the bullauns. We cleaned some of the detritus that is moulding away on and around the stone, but brambles have taken hold in the space between the upper surface and the lower.
Through swallow holes on Cuilcagh (Binn Chuilceagh), water drains down off the mountain and rises here at the Shannon Pot. It’s quite an eerie place to pass some time, watching the water swirling up from underground and then rushing out of the pot and heading south to eventually empty into the Atlantic at Limerick. Well signposted on the Blacklion to Glangevlin road, there are car-parking facilities and a new pathway that allow anyone to have access to this quite magical spot.
150 metres north-east of the of the main cairn at Poulawack are the remains of another small burial cairn. Rising to a little over a metre, it’s a robbed out ruin. Estimated diameter is about 10 metres. At the centre of the mound there are the remains of a burial chamber/cist, with some of the orthostats still in place on the east side. It’s hard to guess the dimensions of this due to the infill. On a drizzly, January day we wondered who it was that pulled this mound apart and what they were looking for.
There is now a turnstile-type gate and three information boards at Poulnabrone. The pathway from the road to the tomb looks and feels unfinished. How many of the million-a-year visitors that the Cliffs of Moher get stop off here? There were 2 tour buses here the day we arrived, late January, when most of the Burren facilities were closed down. We waited for them to leave and had the monument to ourselves.
A 3 basin bullaun that’s not marked on Sheet 56. Take the road south from Oldbridge to Laragh. After about a mile the road dips where Keocha’s Brook passes under the road. 10 metres before this on the right-hand side is a gate into a large, sloping field. Walk west through here just above the brook for approx. 500 metres. The stone is there in the corner of the field.
It’s a large lump of a rock that may have been previously earthfast. It reminds me of Clonmore bullaun stone: themodernantiquarian.com/site/935
Two of the basins are over a foot in diameter and quite deep. The other is very shallow, maybe the beginnings of a forgotten project.
For more on this see miscellaneous post below.
Possibly the most impressive site in all of Wicklow, IMO. Should you venture this way I urge you to give yourself plenty of time. There’s so much to see that the measly 20 minutes I allowed myself was not nearly enough. I barely scratched the surface, so to speak.
It’s signposted from the Shillelagh to Tullow road and you need to take the 1st left turn after you turn from this road. Another sign, in dreadful condition, points you into the field about 300 metres along here.
The field is used as cattle pasture, including the space between the inner and outer enclosures, and was very muddy in early January, so come prepared.
Another unmarked Wicklow bullaun that shows up in the Arch. Inventory of Co. Wicklow, this is 100 metres south-east from Aghowle Lower church and is 4 basin stone. An earthfast boulder, the northernmost basin has eroded away at the edge of the stone and can no longer hold water. The easternmost basin is the largest of the 4.
The Glen of Imaal is one of the most beautiful places in Wicklow. A natural amphitheatre of gigantic proportions, it has one major problem: most of it is an army artillery range.
Marked on the map, just inside the range 400 metres along a track, is a graveyard that has many modern and less modern graves. 15 metres to its east-south-east it also has a bullaun stone. The stone is flush with the ground and has one bullaun, circular, estimated at 25 cms diameter by 8 cms deep.
The views from this commanding position, south to Keadeen and Brusselstown and East to Camenaboulogue and the hills up to Lugnaquilla, are gorgeous.
The grounds of Stewart’s hospital are a bit of a maze. I had to ask directions for this from a staff member. On the last day of November ‘06 in the wind and rain I didn’t venture into the undergrowth to check the structure.
100 metres or so back from the Wicklow Gap road/Glendalough/Laragh road the Wicklow Way comes down to the road from Brockagh mountain. There’s a clear signpost for it there and directly opposite on the other side of the road there’s a farmgate. Over this about 20 metres into the field and to your left is the first of the bullauns. Said to have ‘9 granite boulders with 13 basins’, I located 8. The first of these is very font-like, with one bullaun carved/worked into the flat surface of a split rock. 10 metres to the west of this is a boulder with 2 bullauns, one of which seems to be in poor and very worn condition. Roughly 10 metres south of this is another double bullaun, again with one perfect specimen and its worn twin. Walk roughly 20 metres south-west of here and you’re confronted with the “Seven Fonts”. This is a concentration of 4 boulders, 3 with a single bullaun and one with the aforementioned rectangular basin with 3 bullauns inside it and one outside. 25 metres north-west of here is a huge earthfast boulder with a single bullaun. Which gives you 8 stones and 13 bullauns!
Heading north-west from the caretaker’s house, I decided to try and locate the stones behind the sawmill. You can see this about 80 metres up along the west bank of the Glendasan and as I was already in the field I went for it. Careful back here! The banks of the river are very steep and slippery. I was fairly nervous here but then I spied the huge stone in the river with the single bullaun Quite mad really, but I descended to have a better look and get a better shot. The late-November-swollen river, and the fact that I was in someone’s back garden, stopped me going any further.
It’s beside the right-hand pillar at the end of the car-park and is hugely ignored, with rubbish littering its vicinity. The stone itself has been broken, probably dug up and brought here to be willfully neglected.
Walk straight through the main monastic settlement and cross the wooden bridge over the Glenealo river and there it is. The first of the font-like stones, it’s surrounded by a heap of ‘megalithics’ that may or may not pre-date the christian settlement in their arrangement.
I would never have come here if not for Monumental About Prehistoric Dublin and its author, Tom Fourwinds. Right beside the red Luas tram line, in a public park, I couldn’t help wondering how many thousands pass this by each day on their way to and from work and don’t even SEE it. Aside from Ballybrack portal tomb, this is the most urban site I’ve been to. I climbed the mound in the vain hope of understanding the monument. It reminds me of the Rath in Tornant Lower themodernantiquarian.com/site/9025 with its two tiers. The views to the south, across Tallaght, towards the ridge above Glenasmole were worth coming here for.
A fifth bullaun at this site! I returned here to show a friend III and IV then decided to have a scout around for I and II and came across another one. It has 2 bullauns, a very shallow one about 7 cms across and 3 cms deep (almost just a cup-mark) and a much deeper ovoid one, about 12 cms on the longer axis and very deep. The rock has fissured through the larger bullan and seems to me to have been moved to where it now lies, possibly causing this damage.
I never located I and II.
There are many huge megaliths like this around Moytirra east and over on the other side of Lough Arrow at Carrowkeel. They are very probably glacial erratics but this one seemed so like it had been PUT there that I’ve posted it here. Should anybody have the slightest difficulty with this I’ll delete it. I would like the chance to go back there and investigate further, hopefully when the cows aren’t around.
Marked as an Ogham stone on sheet 33, this pair are parked on the south side of a rath. The western stone, which is almost entirely covered in white lichen, has the aforementioned inscription. Both stones are about a metre tall.
Slightly closer to the road than is marked on the OS map, you can see this one as you drive by (12/11/06). It’s a delightfully odd, 2 metre tall, deeply eroded, leaning phallus. How it hasn’t collapsed is anyone’s guess. The erosion on the side away from the road was a nice surprise.
A massive slab of stone, 2 metres long, tapering from 2 and-a-half to 3 metres tall and about three-quarters of a metre thick. It’s leaning slightly to the west now and must have taken a massive effort to erect. A complete wild estimate of about 15 tons in weight makes this the biggest standing stone I’ve seen yet. Impressive.
There are 2 possible routes to the cairns on Patrickstown Hill. You could climb Carnbane East and head across from there; or you could do what I did and park at N604783 on the east side of the hill and follow the faint track that starts behind the gate opposite the parking spot.
This track leads around in an arc on the south side of the hill. It starts to dip a bit but then rises once more on the south-west side, terminating in the small meadow that holds the three X cairns.
Having seen the drawing posted here my expectations were high. What a pity then to find the stone almost completely eroded, with only very faint markings and a jumble of various lichen further obscuring the matter. Cairn X1 may have been glorious once upon a time, but those days are long gone. Of the three here it still has quite a bit of kerbing left and is structurally the most cairn-like.
I could only find 4 stones of Cairn X2 and there is no visible mound to suggest a cairn. One of the stones in the centre of the putative cairn has a bullaun but this looks to be of a more recent vintage.
Cairn X3, of which it is said that two stones remain, has only one visible, and not much else to write home about.
You may wish to head up to the summit to search out Cairn Y. Make sure you have good footwear and a ton of patience: the heather and brambles are waist high and the ground, in late October, was extremely boggy. I did a cursory search and found bupkis.
The one happy thing to report from this site are that the views across to Carnbane east, with Cairn T as dominant as ever, are magnificent.
Item no. 295 of the Arch. Inventory of Co. Meath, this is said to be a “standing stone with about thirty cup-marks.” The stone is very like a kerbstone, about a metre high and 2 metres long and it is possible that it comes from a local passage grave. I counted 54 cup-marks, though not very scientifically.
The site is a very well looked after graveyard in the drumlins south and below Sliabh na Cailí. I couldn’t help but speculate that the mound that the graveyard is sited on is a passage grave that has been christianised and that this is where the stone comes from. There are some very rough-hewn gravestones that look suspiciously like the structural stones of a megalithic tomb.
Across the road is a holy well with some lovely sweet water.
Arch. Inventory of Co. Wicklow has it that this is a possible passage tomb. Also says that a decorated stone now in the National Museum of Ireland is reputed to have come from here.
The mound itself is completely overgrown with gorse. There are a few outlying stones to the north of the site that may be part of the kerb. On the south side there is one large boulder that could be some possible kerbing too.
I clomped through the gorse to a clear area on top of the mound but there are no signs of any opening into the tomb here.
The views across to Keadeen and Lugnaquilla are amazing.
I searched high and low for the bullaun that’s marked on the OS map at S977949 but to no avail. I was about to give up when I noticed a beaten track leading from the forestry entrance where I had parked. I followed this and it led me out of the forestry and into the field where the bullaun is marked. Continuing along this I crossed the stream and BAM, Brittas 4 with its four single and one double bullaun was there in front of me. I can safely say that this came as a total shock and a surprise to me. Continuing further up the track about 10 metres further on is Brittas 3 with its four bullauns.
Both of these stones are earthfast. They sit there for all the world like magical vessels as the small brook bubbles nearby. Seems there’s a lot more to this place than what first meets the eye. According to the Arch. Inventory of Co. Wicklow there’s “a large, earthfast granite boulder with four basins…” which I take to be what I have called Brittas 3. With the two that Fourwinds has added, thats four bullauns with 50 metres of each other. Awesome!
In a garden just off the N81 at Ballintruer More is this charming stone. It’s well marked on the map and well looked after by the folks that own the house.
Not much to add here ‘cept to say that the new M1 extension will be passing about 100 metres from this site soon.
Up a steep embankment from the road and set into the side of the field, I approached this tomb from the neighbouring field as there were the usual frisky bullocks about. Confused by the barely visible layout, it wasn’t until I checked megalithomania that I discovered that this is a court tomb, and a nice one too at that.
Set into the mound of a holy well (megalithomania.com/show/site/931) in the corner of a field and probably not in its original position. The stone is very roughly a metre cubed and of the aggregate that’s common in these parts. The one bullaun is about 8 to 10 cms deep. It’s a beautiful little site and well worth a visit. There were some ‘offerings’ in the water in the bullaun the day I was there, 22/9/06.
The western stone of a pair. Sheet 35 shows another, 100 metres to the east, putting it in a farmyard.
Not marked on OS sheet 35. Leave Virginia town on the R194, Ballyjamesduff road. The stone is in a field on the left, just as you leave town, on ground owned by Virginia Park Estate.
A little over a metre tall, conical and triangular, it’s a weighty, bulky stone.
Easy to find north-north-west of Mullagh, but not really worth visiting. Arch. Inventory of Co. Cavan says that it’s the possible remains of a dual court tomb. The south-west side of the tomb is all that’s left in situ, with many large boulders scattered about nearby.
Parked at H958081 and crossed the road, over the unpainted farm gate and headed south. This is a large field and you need to head along its western edge. Careful of some extremely frisky bullocks! When you reach the south-western corner of the field, cross into the next field over to your west. You should see the outcrop from here.
There’s more than one panel that has markings here. The most impressive one has at least 20 elongated cup-marks, some being 3 centimetres deep. The Arch. inventory of Co. Louth mentions at least 10 cup and ring devices. No ring devices were visible the day we were there, but there was a lot of growth on the rocks.
There is the remains of a possible wedge tomb close by, though it’s very hard to say due to modern disturbance.