Grange / Lios, Lough Gur

Nearest town:
Bruff (5km SSW)
OS reference:
R6441
OS sheet:
65
Latitude:
52° 31' 9.44 N
Longitude:
8° 31' 49.43 W
Added to TMA by

Sites within Grange / Lios, Lough Gur

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Images

Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by ryaner

The sun came out for a bit and brought out the art.

Image credit: ryaner
ryaner
ryaner Jul 5, 2024
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by ryaner

The decorated stone discovered by Ken Williams 2 years ago,

Image credit: ryaner
ryaner
ryaner Jul 5, 2024
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by ryaner

Standing well back on the bank on the northern arc of the circle.

Image credit: ryaner
ryaner
ryaner Jul 5, 2024
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by CianMcLiam

Stone with megalithic art discovered by Ken Williams in August 2022. The carved stone is the fourth stone to the north of the entrance.

Image credit: Ken Williams
CianMcLiam
CianMcLiam Oct 31, 2022
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by Ebor

Grange Lios by night!
Totally under estimated the sheer scale of this amazing stone circle at Lough Gur .The light pollution in the background is from Limerick City.

Image credit: https://www.facebook.com/EborBensonPhotography
E
Ebor May 7, 2016
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by bawn79

4th February 2015 – near cross quarter day sunset at the Grange Lios.

Image credit: Bawn79 2015
bawn79
bawn79 Feb 5, 2015
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by bawn79

Map of Lough Gur – from circa 1840, note it shows the larger circle that is now gone, 266ft diam ? with houses in it. Note 9/12/15 – 266 is actually the height above sea level I think. I have found a ref in Windles survey of the area to the circle being 170ft in diameter.

Image credit: OSI 2011
bawn79
bawn79 Jul 15, 2011
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by bawn79

Sunrise over Crom Dubh on the 21st June 2010.
This seems to confirm Burls calculations.

Image credit: Bawn79 © 2010
bawn79
bawn79 Jun 21, 2010
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by bawn79

The shadow of myself and crom dubh. Note the length that the shadow of crom dubh attains (20th June 2010)

Image credit: Bawn79 © 2010
bawn79
bawn79 Jun 21, 2010
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by bawn79

The sun rise hitting the “back” stones on the 20th June 2010.

Image credit: Bawn79 © 2010
bawn79
bawn79 Jun 21, 2010
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by bawn79

Shadow coming from Crom Dubh on the 20th June 2010.
Crom Dubh entering the circle?

Image credit: Bawn79 © 2010
bawn79
bawn79 Jun 21, 2010
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by bawn79

The sun entering the circle on the 20th June 2010.

Image credit: Bawn79 © 2010
bawn79
bawn79 Jun 21, 2010
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by bawn79

Sunrise over Crom Dubh on the 20th June 2010

Image credit: Bawn79 © 2010
bawn79
bawn79 Jun 21, 2010
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by CianMcLiam

Samhain sunset 2008, viewed from the circle entrance passage and through the portals.

Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com 2008
CianMcLiam
CianMcLiam Nov 4, 2008
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by caealun

Standing in the centre, this is a complete 360 degree view of the circle

Image credit: Derfel
caealun
caealun Oct 18, 2007
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by gjrk

Looking through the portals along the axis to Burl’s ‘gunsight’. The shapes and relative positions of these two pairs of stones mimic each other, the southernmost one of each coming in at an angle to its more vertical partner. It’s tempting to imagine a nod here towards the arcing dip of a setting sun, and an observation or celebration both inside and outside the great circle.

Image credit: gjrk
gjrk
gjrk May 6, 2007
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by gjrk

The split in the northern portal leading across to the eastern curve of the perimeter.

Image credit: gjrk
gjrk
gjrk May 6, 2007
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by gjrk

The massive portals at the northeast of the circle.

Image credit: gjrk
gjrk
gjrk May 6, 2007
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by gjrk

Looking southwest across the circle with the russet rear of Rannnach Croim Dubh filling the right hand side of the picture.

Image credit: gjrk
gjrk
gjrk May 6, 2007
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by gjrk

In the tradition of ‘stones that look like something else’...
The Eagle of Grange.

Image credit: gjrk
gjrk
gjrk May 6, 2007
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by CianMcLiam

The two middle stones form the entrance, notice how the left hand stone has split in two

Image credit: Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com
CianMcLiam
CianMcLiam Nov 17, 2006
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by CianMcLiam

The drawing of the circle on the information board outside the circle.

Image credit: Ken Williams
CianMcLiam
CianMcLiam Jun 14, 2005
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by CianMcLiam

A panorama showing the circle and the bank, this was a larger image that has been resized by the server...

Image credit: Ken Williams
CianMcLiam
CianMcLiam Jun 14, 2005
Image of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur (Stone Circle) by IronMan

All photographs supplied by a workmate who visited the site last year.

Image credit: C. Aughton
IronMan
IronMan Jan 24, 2002

Articles

Grange / Lios, Lough Gur

C
CARL Jun 2, 2011

Visited 19.5.11
WOW! I have been blown away with the quality of the prehistoric sites I have visited since coming to Ireland and this is yet another cracker – one of the best stone circles I have ever visited. Very easy to access being right next to the road and parking is no problem.
There was a donation box attached to the gate which is for the upkeep of the site and I was more than happy to contribute.
The circle was full of young cows that completely ignored me and carried on chewing the cud. I wasn’t quite as lucky as I managed to step in 3 separate cow pats!
This is an almost a perfect circle of stones of various height – too many to count accurately.
One stone is a huge square block that would not have looked out of place in Avebury – about 2 metres x 2 metres x 1 metre.
The strange ‘alter’ made up of small stones is still standing.

Grange / Lios, Lough Gur

gjrk
gjrk May 9, 2007

I’ve not got a lot to add here, given the fame of this site and its comprehensive coverage in all sorts of guide books. A great little volume written by the O’Kellys is available from the proud and committed landowner.

Aubrey Burl in his big ‘Stone Circles of...’ book remarks that the monument’s relationships lie with the Wicklow circles and not with the Scottish recumbent and Munster axial stone varieties. I’m not so sure that a connection to the ASCs should be written off completely. Two northeastern portals look along a main axis, with a winter sunset declination, to two stones at the southwest which, because they sit together, give the same shape as one more broad than high. A supplied v-notch sits in the middle of these ‘axial stones’, an effect also offered by natural valleys in the sightlines of the Winter Solstice circles of Drombeg and Lettergorman South. Maybe in 1000 years an idea could mutate and fuse with other influences and appear some distance to the South?

Grange / Lios, Lough Gur

bawn79
bawn79 Nov 1, 2005

Was down at Lough Gur for the Oiche Samhain sunset, I’ve read that there is meant to be an alignment between the horned stones in the circle and an Crom Dubh (the biggest stone in the circle). However from what I could see on the evening this seems incorrect but the sun does go down more or less behind the horned stones.

The “Rainbow Circle” had camped here for the last couple of nights and provided some lovely music that really added to the atmosphere of the sunset. Although I didn’t prove the above alignment to be correct, the setting sun and music really contributed to a peaceful and very interesting evening that I came back feeling a lot better from.

To the north of the circle was another circle that was destroyed in 1826 to used for road building. It was meant to be 52m diameter with 72 stones. It would have been a monster and is sadly lost. Would be interesting to do Geophysics on the area.

Grange / Lios, Lough Gur

rangzen
rangzen Aug 28, 2003

When we visited this site in September 2001 (yes, I know these are slightly delayed notes) the farmer who owns the land was on-site, and he was great. He took us on a mini-tour of the main circle and also of the standing stones in the surrounding fields (I can’t remember exact details, it’s so long ago!).

The point of this post is to say what a great guy; he really stands in contrast to those landowners who will do anything they can to deter you from seeing the great monuments to which they are privileged to control the access. He really appreciated having the stones on his land and was only too happy to tell us about various legends. Big up!!

Grange / Lios, Lough Gur

IronMan
IronMan Apr 17, 2002

The huge circle at Grange stands in a fantastic neolithic complex. A further two circles, standing stones, wedge-tombs and crannógs make up this wonderful landscape. We made our visit en-route to Cork, so managed the main circle, one other circle and a wedge tomb, but I’m sure a few days could be spent exploring this landscape.

The henge circle itself is fascinating.

Walking through the stone lined entrance passage, the view stretches across to a large V shaped notch at the far end of the circle, aligned on the Samain sunset (Burl) and/or the moon’s minimum midsummer setting in 2500BC (Weir).

From the centre of the circle, to the NE lies a huge 20 ton stone, known as Rounach Croim Dubh, ‘the prominent black stone’ (Burl) or my prefered translation Huge Black Stooper (Weir). This stone is aligned on the midsummer sunrise. The psychology of this site is second to none. I found it easier than ever to contemplate the effect of these events on the minds of the Neolithic people.

We spent a good portion of the afternoon lazing about here, the sun was beating down, and I had a bit of a hangover from the Cope gig in Dublin. I couldn’t think of a better place to hang out.

Folklore

Grange / Lios, Lough Gur
Stone Circle
bawn79
bawn79 Nov 29, 2005

When this stone circle was being excavated by archaeologists an old woman in the area who was renowned for psychic powers happened to be on her way home from Limerick. She stopped at the site and immediately fell into a trance. In her trance she saw men sacrificing a woman at an altar. She awoke from her trance before they actually cut the woman.
No evidence has ever been found for sacrifice at this site so maybe she was just telling people what she thought they wanted to hear.

Miscellaneous

Grange / Lios, Lough Gur
Stone Circle
gjrk
gjrk Jan 19, 2008

A significant reassessment by Helen Roche of the construction date for the Great Circle: ‘The dating of the Embanked Stone Circle at Grange, Co. Limerick’ in Roche, Grogan, Bradley, Coles and Raftery (eds.): ‘From Megaliths to Metal – Essays in honour of George Eogan’, 2004, 109-116.

The most recent pottery-type, found at a position which would have predated the monument – in this case beneath the bank on the old ground surface – was ‘Class II’ ware. This type, in the light of extensive comparitive studies with securely dated material over the years, is now judged to be a Late Bronze Age coarse ware. Therefore the circle, officially designated to have been constructed in the Neolithic, is actually a Late Bronze Age site, of a similiar age to the axial stone circles that I felt had a comparable skeletal stucture (see fieldnotes above).

Topics

Solstice Sesiún in the circle! 24
CianMcLiam
CianMcLiam
Jun 2007

Sites within 20km of Grange / Lios, Lough Gur

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