Mountainviews.ie records the name Temple Hill as meaning 'hill of the church'.
Ive passed by this mountain so many times and wondered about the size of the cairn.
It is big but not as huge as I hoped. The cairn itself has been dug out in the middle to form a shelter. Normally you would be pretty pissed off with that but believe me you really need as much shelter as you can get up here. I climbed up on a nice warm calm day down at ground level but by the time I got to 785m some serious winds had whipped up. Going up here on any kind of windy day would be very dangerous so if anyone is thinking of heading up be careful.
Could the cairn conceal a passage tomb? I dont know really, there is a slight depression on the eastern side of the tomb nothing major really. The middle of the tomb is pretty robbed out but I would still think there would be sufficient depth below it to conceal a passage.
The cairn itself must be 3-5m high, diameter 20m?. Not sure really it was hard to tell with the wind, the western side seems to be very close to what looked like a drop so I didnt venture to close.
To get up there will take about 3-4hr round trip depending where you take off from and really there is no easy way up.
I drove up to a farmyard at R857203 and followed the Pigeonbrook River for about 0.5km and then decided to climb up via a dried out stream bed climbing about 300m in height. Then I just plodded along up the 2km at a fairly ok pace. Coming back down I followed the Pigeonrock river but beware because it is a V shaped valley and pretty hazardous.
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Posted by bawn79
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