ryaner

I really liked this little monument. Said to be part of “a complex of prehistoric sites”, there’s a ring cairn two fields away that 4 of the photos here are of, and there’s a quite substantial wedge tomb down the hill. This ‘cairn’ is very barrow-like and has a fosse, probably created by the digging of the material that makes up the mound. The stones on the mound may or may not be part of a disturbance/excavation.

So to Bremore passage grave cemetery once again. The endangered Bremore passage grave cemetery. Five recorded passage graves (by Herity), a recorded fulacht fia, a recorded unclassified barrow and an unrecorded shell midden, all within a small corner of a small headland in the northernmost part of the county Dublin coastline.

We parked on the lane and headed into the cropless field towards the south-eastern mound. If this ever was a passage grave, it’s been totally ruined beyond recognition. The mound, along with the next one a little to the north and the one to the extreme west of the group, are only recognisable as anything prehistoric because the farmer has desisted from ploughing them into oblivion. These three have a couple of boulders each that may be parts of kerbstones, but all three barely rise a half metre above the surrounding terrain. They are all elongated, their longer axis pointing back towards the main mound.

The main mound is a large, circular cairn that seems to have been robbed out, as opposed to the ‘collapse’ mentioned in the Monuments Database entry. It reminds me of the chunk taken out of Dowth. I had hoped to be able to explore the chamber/passage area a bit more given the time of year, but last year’s brambles are too tightly woven and still quite vicious. Pity.

The tomb is less than 5 metres from the shoreline. We traversed our way down below the main mound and found a rather impressive shell midden. This looks to have been a feasting area, but the sea has eroded into the material and is in danger of washing it away altogether.

The last of the five so-called tombs is barely recognisable under all the vegetation, even though growth has been slow with our late Spring this year.

In the townland of Collierstown is this small barrow. It now lies trapped behind the ugly fencing of Bellewstown race-track.
This is the entry from the Arch. Inventory of Co. Meath:
Oval mound (dims. 17m N-S, 12m E-W, H 1.8m), disturbed by digging SSW-NW. Cist (ME027-029001-) found c. 2m W of mound.

On the way from Bellewstown to Herbertstown I nearly collided with these. They are not marked on the OS map sheet 43. Three large, squat megaliths sit there in the middle of a triangle that splits a y-shaped junction. They are said to be the remains of a stone circle on archaeology.ie but no other details are given. A nice curiosity, though I remembered seeing them on Megalithomania.com some years back.

Didn’t really want to approach this mound, though it is right beside a public right-of-way. The Delvin river here cuts through a small gorge and the mound is placed on a prominent shelf above this on the south side.

Another Dublin city curiosity. I have passed this mound/barrow so many times and said to myself, if that’s not a barrow then I’ll never know what is. I’ve photographed it maybe 10 times, but to no great extent as I’ve never had the confidence to put it up here – try as one might but there is no mention of it anywhere that I can find, either in print or on the ‘net (slight edit – wouldn’t you know, it’s on the national monuments database as a mound).

So imagine my surprise today as I brought my daughter to the playground nearby – there was the ‘barrow’ tightly surrounded by a temporary fence, with a mechanical digger not 10 metres from it and a woman in a hi-vis vest overseeing the operations.

I parked the car and headed over. I asked the woman what was going on. She said that works were underway to help with the drainage of this part of the park. It’s the site of the popular, annual garden show ‘Bloom’ and the area has become flooded in recent years due to our great weather. Oh I see, said I, and why is that lump over there fenced off? Well that’s a mound, says she, that could be very old. And are you an archaeologist, I asked. I am, she replied. So I took the plunge and said I was interested in that sort of thing and that for years I’ve believed it to be a prehistoric barrow. Well you just might be right, said she, but do you know the history of Ashtown Castle over there? Ah, I’m not really interested in that to the extent that I’m interested in this, says I, but thanks anyway, and off I headed.

So there you have it. An unmentioned barrow in the Phoenix Park where there have been other bronze-age burial finds.

Holy or sacred wells don’t do well on TMA – they usually get the ‘of disputed antiquity’ tag – so when on reading in Gary Branigan’s book, The Ancient & Holy Wells of Dublin, that St.Mobhi’s Well near Skerries had a “number of cup marks present on some of the boulders, pointing to possible Neolithic origin” I had to pay a visit.

The site is marked on OS sheet 43 at the right-hand side of a track in Milverton Demesne. The entrance to this contains a stile, and indeed 20 yards to its right there is a hand-written sign that says “Please use the stile” attached to some barbed wire. This barbed wire blocks off the old pathway to the well. After traversing the stile you need to turn right immediately and follow the old path, not the seductive track that we were fooled into taking, thus having to climb a thorn-covered wall and cross the stream that flows beside the well.

The old well is impressively, even megalithically, constructed. The huge boulder at the back of the well-house rests on some stones like a portal tomb. This is the only boulder that we could find that had anything resembling cup marks. To quote the book again: “These cup marks are said to be the finger impressions of the mythical Fionn MacCumhaill when he threw these boulders from nearby Lusk.” Most of the rest of the other stones were covered in ivy so we didn’t find any more that had cup marks, but the ones that were most visible looked like solution pits, though it’s hard for me to be categoric about that.
The stairs down into the well are are well-worked flagstones. As you descend, there is a bullaun in a recess on the right-hand side. This is a craggy old, shallow-basined example but is said to contain the cure (for warts, toothache, headache and disorders of the throat).

As we arrived at the well a robin fluttered out from the main chamber of the well-house. This well-house is quite crudely (in the most gentle sense) constructed. The walls are of boulders and support a large, flat capstone/flagstone. This has then been covered over with larger boulders giving the well-house a conical shape. The water had leaf and other detritus so I didn’t fancy a taste.

This is a site well worth visiting, with relatively easy access and parking by the burial ground nearby. My instinct says that the construction around the spring of the well is not ancient in the TMA sense. However, there are two christian crosses here, carved into two separate stones and looking like a sly attempt to christianise the site. How will we ever find out its provenance? I guess the only way is through excavation, but the attendant folklore about Fionn, the supposed cup marks, and some of the methods of construction here leave one thinking of pre-christian possibilities.

Kinda cheating here a bit as I didn’t actually visit the site – visiting strictly by invitation only. Lambay is meant to be rich in neolithic heritage – the site of an axe factory. Love to go there some day.