CianMcLiam

As of June 2022 there is an official notice asking people not to go inside the monument I only saw it after leaving because the sign is several metres away and opposite the direction you arrive from the car park.

This piece of rock art literally fell out of the gap in the wall behind it in 2008, having been placed with the carved face inwards when the wall was being built. Several such pieces have been discovered this way in the Carlow area over the past couple of decades.

The walls here are very substantial, piled four feet high or more and almost as thick. They cross the hillsides for miles around. Who knows how many more pieces are hidden within them.

This carved stone was found buried in a field nearby many years ago and was temporarily set into a wall before being moved to the front of a farmers cottage for safe keeping.
The cottage now lies in a forgotten pile of stone in the corner of a field and I was not very hopeful of locating the rock art. However, after hacking through the undergrowth for a while this stone stood out as the largest on top of the pile and moving a decaying tree trunk revealed the carvings underneath, still in an excellent state of preservation.

It is the only example of rock art so far discovered in Co. Westmeath.

One part of this stone was found several years ago when part of a field wall was removed, since then the other three parts have turned up along the wall and have recently been reconstructed in the gap formed by a gateway.

There is very good access, up a farm lane to the west of the site, then follow a barely noticeable carved cup and ring sign placed in a gateway (unfortunately placed in the wrong side if you are driving up the lane, but ok if you have come down the hill as part of the walking trail), straight across the field to the gateway in the far wall opposite.

There is a stake placed right in front of it, but it is only sitting in a base and can easily be taken out for photos and then replaced.

(notes relate to the photo posted here: themodernantiquarian.com/post/82176/boleycarrigeen.html)

Boleycarrigeen Stone Circle at sunset 03/01/10, in the foreground are the two portal stones which are the tallest stones in the circle and in the centre of the shot is the axial stone, one of the smallest, probably indicating sunset at winter solstice from what I saw this afternoon and as can be seen in the photo. The sun’s setting position moves extremely slowly around the solstices though a proper survey and observation closer to the date might be needed to confirm.

As far as I can tell from researching this circle this alignment has not been noted before. Burl does not indicate any alignment event here at all. Up until the last year the circle was in a small clearing in a plantation that blocked views in all directions but near the winter solstice in 2005, Tom Fourwinds and I thought we could see some sunlight glow behind the axial stone.

This year was the first that accurate observations could be made but due to bad weather and treacherous roads it was only today that I managed to return to view the sunset, though I don’t recommend anyone visiting any time soon as the roads are still extremely dangerous. The plantation is also growing back quickly with no route left to the circle, the trees are planted very close together so this and possibly next year may be the last time this can be viewed before the circle is swallowed up again by trees.

I think I owe the guy who drive in front of me up to the hills a credit here too because if he wasn’t driving in front of me I probably wouldn’t have chanced the roads at all as they were like ski slopes (though his jeep had much bigger tyres than mine!).

Now this is interesting. The stone is kept in a heritage museum in the former Church of Ireland at St. Mullins (the ruined abbey and high cross are in the same place) and I was told the National Musuem has the original and the heritage centre a copy.

Either Ireland is home to a master stone carver who lovingly spent years carving and applying very convincing weathering and wear on this stone or both the National Museum and the Heritage Centre have gotten themselves into a mixup. I’m 95% sure this is the original stone taken from the top of a field wall on Dranagh Mountain, and the carvings match a sketch taken from the piece in the National Museum. The Heritage Centre have original pics of the stone from not long after it was found and every contour of the stone matches yet not a single modern tool mark is visible. Remarkable!

It is a lovely stone with an unusual design, could be a sibling of the stone at Tinnacarrig in that the design seems to have been planned around the shape of the piece. And here, like at Spahill, we see a lip/groove carved around the edge of the stone and curling back into the space to the right of the cup and ring. A beauty, and either the best fake in the world or a little stone lost...

Summer Solstice Sunrise, 21st June 2009.

Ah yes, the summer solstice. I trekked up the hillside from the carpark (a longer and steeper walk than I had anticipated for this early in the morning!) and arrived just in time for that ancient traditional ritual: ‘Foxy, SHUT THE F*&K UP!! F&%K SAKE! Mick, shut your effing dog up, f%&kin hell’.

Two heads had camped up at the circle and their pregnant retriever was guarding the tent with far too much enthusiasm. Who needs ravers and gluesniffers at Stonehenge when you can stare into the ‘jaws of death’ in Bonane Heritage Park.

Eventually one body emerged from the tent, and soon we were joined by a biker who’s friend had gotten a puncture and was observing the cloudy skyline from the side of a miserable road a few miles away.

It didn’t take long for the reality to sink in, there was to be no sunrise this solstice. The horizon line is quite high up above the circle so I knew it would be some time before the sun would reach that high so I wandered around the other monuments in the park in vain hope.

At 6.30am, the silence was once again broken by the sound of cars roaring up the track way. Thee cars appeared and parked below the ring fort, it seemed to have been some kind of guided tour so I shadowed them for a while to see what I could find out.

The sunrise from the circle apparently occurs quite late, sometime around 6.30- 6.40am. At this time the sun has been up for over an hour and so would be a blinding light appearing above the ridge beyond, probably impossible to observe safely with the naked eye and very tricky to photograph (no chance of detail in the circle unless you blend a couple of shots).

I think this was the fourth cloudy solstice in a row, except one year when I watched the most beautiful sunrise from a deckchair off the coast of Borneo. At least I came away with two valuable nuggets of information for next time, sleep in for another hour and check the gates are locked before huffing and puffing up the hill by foot!

This is an amazing and exceptionally rare example of a near complete court tomb, just one roofstone appears to be missing. The court and cairn are still underneath the bog, the top of the cairn reaches just a little higher than the uncut surrounding bog. One of the most important features of this particular site is the untouched corbelled walls and roofing which shows how the many court tombs with only low walls remaining would originally have been built up into substantial chambers.
To find this site you need either a GPS unit or guidance from a local.

Apparently around 19 examples of rock art have been recorded in this townsland alone, with two more in the adjacent townsland of Letter West and the large group at Coomasaharn near the lake.

Because many were almost entirely covered in peat they have been amazingly well preserved, to compare the weathered carvings with the protected ones is like night and day. This area also has some unique cross or cruciform carvings with cups and pennanular rings at the end of each arm and sometimes inside the remaining ‘slices’ of the axis.

The numbers assigned to the panels here are the entry numbers for the Archaeological Survey of the Iveragh Peninsula.

A very, very sad place. Ballykissane burial ground is a disused Cillín or burial ground for infants that died before baptism. Under the shroud of the maniacal catholic church, the un-baptised were buried away from the consecrated graveyard alongside murderers, lunatics and others deemed beyond salvation. A very nice woman who lives nearby nearly had tears falling when she was describing how grief stricken parents of infants were forced to bury their child after midnight in this graveyard away from the community and could not wake them or find comfort in the normal burial rituals. Those sick bastards. Ballykissane was in use up until the mid 20th century.

Only tiny bits of boulders mark the graves and the graveyard is so overgrown that it’s impossible to see many of them now.
Recently, perhaps in a moment of repentance, a standing stone with a plaque of remembrance for the children buried here was erected where the old track to the burial ground met the road to the east.

The rock art is now sitting under a tree along the borders of the raised burial area but has moved at least once. Along both sides of a fissure are five cup and rings and around 12 deep and rounded cup marks. Other rings may have weathered away.

Access is through a farmyard along the road south. Please ask.

Having failed to get the key once more (so close, so far!) I was going to visit Sess Kilgreen again when I passed the sign for Knockmany and decided to check it out anyway.

The forestry service guy told me to drive up until I reach the service car park nearer the top, so up I drove. And up. And then nearly drove into the side of the tomb! I didn’t realise it was possible to drive all the way up but the track is steep and not very solid so I would recommend the forest walk instead.

It was a clear, sunny day and the views were amazing, recent rain seemed to have cleared the haze. The enclosing bunker is hideous as lamented elsewhere, but the tomb inside is great, lots of bizarre and surprising carvings visible through the door and from the skylight.

By employing a few tricks (sticking camera on tripod through the bars and perching flash units up on the skylight) I was able to get some decent pics all the same.

Something should really be done about the interior of this monument, it makes the Fourknocks roof look like a work of artistic genius. Whats with the air vent to nowhere behind the backstone? At least painting the walls black would be a vast improvement.

This is possibly a new un-recorded or reported site, Avril Purcell described four panels in the townland, each on ‘unobtrusive’ flat, low lying boulders, these markings are in a large heavy boulder over 1.5m high and 2m broad. Two faces were found to have been carved, the top has weathered basins with rings and what look like cup and ring remains, the opposing face has two cup and rings very closely spaced.

The owner of the house with this piece of rock art forming part of a wall asked that I did not give out the exact location of the stone as he doesn’t want visitors.

The stone was built into a shed or house that was being demolished, the farmer decided to save it and cemented it into his wall, right outside his front door. It’s unclear where exactly it was originally found. The whole panel is just over a foot high.

I set a reminder in my phone to check out this cairn at sunset around Bealtaine as Martin Brennan suggested it has an early May alignment. Well, I since switched phones so it was only while looking for a drawing of something else (the stone at Killin in Co. Louth, which he seems to have confused with Carrickrobin) that it hit me. As luck would have it, the weather then wasn’t great but tonight it was perfect.

The sunset does indeed stream down the left hand side of the passage (as looking out) and forms a rectangle of light on right side of the backstone which slowly decreases in size as the sun reaches the horizon. It may have even entered the now-destroyed right hand chamber before dipping below the horizon.

Humewood Castle is closed presently for renovations and redevelopment (though the golf resort plans are presently being appealed by An Taisce), but luckily I bumped into some people at the gatehouse and was able to venture in for some pics.

The castle is a very large Gothic revival piece from the 19th century complete with walled gardens, lakes and a very large deer park. The co-ords on archaeology.ie place the stone in the middle of a disused tennis court but after some moseying around I spotted a large slab sitting incongruously between two paths very near the castle itself.

The carvings are well worn but immediately obvious once you are close, I doubt there is any time of day or year when the low sun would naturally bring them up at their present location.

A large three ring design with external gutter dominates the panel at about 14” across, surrounded by cups with single or double rings and occasional gutters. Simple cup marks are also dotted around and at the curved top end.

The gent I spoke to (who also assisted me in taking some pics by standing in the sun!) told me it may be moved on the advice of an archaeologist because of the risk of damage being on the verge of the road, it seems to bear fairly recent scars which are thankfully on the un-carved end.

The whole stone is about a metre and a half long, larger than it appeared in previous photos I had seen. Apparently it was found buried while one of the artifical lakes was being built in the castle grounds.

This stone is now in storage in Collins Barracks in Dublin with the decorated face facing the wall.

*Important*
The landowner of this site can be very hostile to unannounced visitors, please do not attempt to visit this site without securing proper permission. Please be warned.

This is a very eroded panel on a lozenge shaped outcrop. Eight cup and ring marks are reported in the Co. Louth survey but I noticed some parallel lines that look suspiciously artificial. The whole panel is about 1.5m long and on two levels.

Description from Co. Louth Survey:
“Lozenge-shaped tabular rock outcrop, with eight cup and ring motifs. These range from a triple-ringed example to simple cup and ring. There is a much-eroded single cup and ring mark on a nearby rock outcrop. (CLAJ 1981, 111)”

On our visit on 12/4/08, the whole site was very overgrown and required quite a bit of clearing and careful removal of dead foliage before the markings became apparent. Permission was not easy to obtain, only for the fact that he remembered Blaze from her previous visit did we finally get the ok. The landowner lives on the main road, not down the lane, look for the boarded up windows and bullet holed windows and do approach with caution. Do not park near the stones blocking the driveway as he does not like this.

After scouring the fields for the rock art locations on archaeology.ie for a couple of hours I slowly accepted that these panels have either become turf covered, or, more alarmingly, been blown up with dynamite like many of the outcrops on the hillside obviously have been over the past few years.

The blown up outcrops in the first field from the road have not been cleared and the remaining stone still litters the hill, this is probably not a good sign since it seems to suggest clearance or building stone was not the reason for using dynamite.

I only found these carvings after a lot of staring at outcrop. There’s definite parallel grooves enclosed by lines but these are hugely weathered now and difficult to bring out in full. I also spotted a single cup surrounded by an almond or ‘eye’ shaped ring on the same outcrop.

This was the fourth time I went looking for this fabled panel and I ended up returning four times, getting washed out each time by wild winds which sent the driving rain in every direction.

The panel has been moved recently from it’s last resting place, under some barbed wire beside a gate, to an altogether more picturesque spot under some trees alongside field clearance.

This is wonderful stuff, a really superbly executed set of ten (count them!) rings around a central cup with not one but two radial lines. These lines extend outside the rings and meander off the side of the surface.

The site is very easy to access and locate now, if you enter Malin from the south, cross the estuary and take the next right. Proceed past the crossroads and look out for two new yellow painted houses with white trimming on the right, park here. Cross the road and hop over the rickety gate, the panel is on the far side of the trees extending to your right from the field wall.

This is the fourth time I tried looking for this panel. Somehow I always ended up arriving late in the day and with fading light levels and plenty of discouragement from the people in the house next door, I never managed to locate it.

This time I beat my way into the wildly overgrown disused graveyard with my tripod and began inspecting the fallen gravestone, mostly barely squared off rocks. After half an hour searching the small clearing I was just about to give up. Wading through the waist-high thorn bushes, my feet kept hitting larger and larger stones, one stone in particular had a large flat triangular face and more hacking revealed a faint arc formed by dirt resting in a groove.

Five minutes of jungle clearing later, the full face and some nice deep cup marks could be seen. With a little side flash, a rather wonderful panel appeared on the camera screen.

This is a small (partial?) panel, a cup with four rings on sandstone, built into the ornamental arch that gives the ruined mansion of Arch Hall it’s name. There are one or two other lines that may indicate some more designs were part of the original composition.

Located this panel safe and sound after some helpful guidance. It had been buried under a pile of small rocks and was a little muddy. After cleaning it by pouring lots and lots of water over it, the full designs became easy to see.

This is a very nice example, both cup and rings are kind of egg shaped and one has a gutter that runs uphill, the other has a large and deep natural hollow that was incorporated into the outer rings of the other design. An odd little panel.

I covered it back up as found, putting some sods of grass and mud on the designs to ensure I didn’t damage them when I placed the rocks back over the panel. Great to see the panel is safe and sound, hope it stays that way.

Access to this wonderful site is by prior arrangement only, please contact Furness house for details: furness-house.com/index.htm

This wonderful bit of rock art was found buried in a field that had been ploughed many times, the bottom edge of the remaining stone is heavily scarred with plough marks.

Apparently it had become a bit of a nuisance so it was dug up in the early 1970’s and much to their surprise these wonderful carvings came to light. The owner of the land at that time was a Mr. Synnott who was also a member of the local archaeological society, he immediately recognised this was an important find and it was moved to the gable end of the medieval church where it still rests. It was described and illustrated by Elizabeth Shee Twohig in 1975 or 1976 in the Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society Vol. 15 No. 5.
JKAS 1975-76.

The top part of the stone seems to have been shattered off as there is half a circular motif filled with small cup marks. The other markings bear resemblance to the Kilwarden stone also found in Kildare but now located in the National Museum in Dublin.

Access to this stone is only by prior arrangement with Furness house. furness-house.com/index.htm

This is a monster of a boulder, propped up on limestone pedestals and partly embedded in the hillside. Was it a burial chamber? Hard to tell, it certainly does just look like a larger version of the many similar sandstone boulder on pedestals seen around the park.

The cup and rings do look pretty convincing from some angles, this is quite a soft stone so perhaps they are just very badly weathered. There definitely is a pair of cup and rings on a small boulder further up the path from the track, even in the unfavourable sunlight and bleached texture of the stone, some carving work was noticeable.

The Archaeological Survey of Co. Louth has a nice photo of some rock art here but I dont think I found the panel that was illustrated. The large outcropping here has been partly bulldozed in the not too distant past, hopefully the best of the rock art did not dissapear with it.

I did manage to find a single cup and ring at the western end of the outcrop, with some possible cup marks beside which are somewhat dubious. The outcrop is very overgrown so there could be lots more underneath.

Incorrectly marked on the other side of the road (or maybe there is another panel there which I failed to locate), this large stone sits in a field beside a large B&B (’The Milestone’) and can be seen from the road and the large standing stone that now sits in the garden of the B&B.

It has been suggested that the stone once stood upright and on first sight it does look like a fallen menhir. Another smaller stone lies a few paces away so it may have made a two-stone row, another possibility is the other large standing stones close by all formed part of a longer stone row that would have been very impressive.

The stone is arrow shaped and most of the markings are near the broad end with just a single cup and ring near the point. The stone is about 4-5m in length, 2m wide and 1.5m high as it presently sits.

If the carvings were done while or before the stone stood, the radiating grooves and gutters (parrallel with each other) would have run across rather than up or down the stone which seems ‘wrong’. As the stone now sits, they run down the sloping surface from the cup and rings which are mostly along the top ridge and part of the way down the slope.

Some boisterous bullocks prevented me getting further than the gate but the stones are wonderfully skylined from the crossroads.

A headstone commemorates three friars killed by Cromwellian soldiers in 1651 near this spot, the stones were regularly whitewashed like many stones but perhaps with more resonance here.

This is a fantastic example of a Burren type wedge tomb, it also has quite easy access from the nearby road.

You cross a number of small ruinous field walls but the last of these is in fact the remainder of a ring fort according to the small booklet ‘A Burren Journey’, available locally.

To the south east of the tomb, just a few yards, is what looks like a small cairn about the same size as those found at Beaghmore, to the south west, adjoining the ruined ring walls, is a circular room or hut foundation with a hearth.

The tomb itself is quite roomy with rubble scattered on the floor, there is some kind of entrance arrangement with some large stones which once formed a facade with a possible entrance fromt he side of the court, alá West Kennet Longbarrow in its present state.

Got some beautiful flashes of glorious sunshine through the heavy clouds here today but the strong winds blew over my tripod with two flash units on, breaking both :(

The ‘Hag of Beara’ is well signposted on the coast road between Ardgroom and Eyeries, there’s a bit of hard shoulder on the corner where you can park.

The rock is through the gate and across about 20m of marshy ground to a small track, you could walk right past it like I did if you dont spot all the offerings strewn over it!

The rock itself is wonderfully weathered and resembles a camel with no legs or neck. There’s great views seawards and across the bay.

It also features the wierdest assortment of ‘offerings’ I have ever come across, car remote controls, batteries, hair scrunchies and a mobile phone belt clip all share crevices with the more usual coins, ‘goddess’ figurine, seashells and berries.

For a split second I thought the hag was having fun with me, I was trying to set a manual exposure on the camera but no matter what I tried, even turning the camera off and removing batteries, I could not set an aperture below F8 even though it was an F4 lens, what the hell???!! Of course there was a simple explanation, I had left the camera in ‘bracketing’ mode at Drombohilly but had not taken the last picture of the bracketing sequence there! For just a moment.............

Visited on 28/4/07. Found 5 panels in total though I believe there are a couple of dozen more at least. The fields with all the outcrops are divided up and there were lambs in the largest so I didn’t venture in there.

If you are planning on visiting, please make it your business to ask first as the landowners are fed up with people wandering in. They have also put up a ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ sign. It was also the first time I’ve been asked about insurance but luckily I had my photographers insurance cert with me.

Apart from the three obvious panels on the high outcrop with bushes on it, I found two other panels, one had a cup and two half rings and what looked very like a scaled down ormaig-alike rosette. The other had a single cup with two rings. I’d love to see a plan of the panels so I could see which ones I missed. If someone had told me I would one day spend a Saturday night literally standing in a field staring at outcrops maybe I would have specialised in photographing bar stool designs manufactured from 1998 to 2005.

GPS: V76703 77430

Found this while trying to compose a straight landscape shot after giving up on finding any rock art in the area. Lined up two upright stones and this to get a shot of some weak sun breaking through in the gap on the horizon when I caught a glimpse of one cup and ring from the corner of my eye! There’s definitely two cups with single rings and some possible stuff beside them but very dubious. In the vicinity of one ‘rock art’ dot in the OS map.

I’m naming it panel D since it was the fourth I found today, will try and locate proper details.

My GPS reading for this panel: V76615 77599

This is one superbly located wedge tomb, amazing views in all directions around Dingle Bay, across to the Iveragh Peninsula and over the fields and beaches far below. From the pictures it looks like the tomb is still covered in most of its cairn, there is a fair amount of cairn still here but the ‘entrance’ is really a gap where a side stone has been removed and the true front has been blocked up with dry walling which also makes up most of what looks like the cairn. It makes a great shelter, probably has been used by shepherds and travellers for thousands of years.

It’s hard to be sure but it seems there are three massive capstones in place, the structure is complete from inside except for the missing sidestone. It once formed part of a field wall and there doesn’t seem to be any double walling present. Overall a fine but modified monument.

To get here follow signs for ‘Arkil’ (the quarry?) from the main road through Lispole, go past the quarry and masts, back down the hill a bit on the left is a track with a wide entrance with room to park a car or two. The map shows the track winds around and back up to the tomb from the south, a much better approach is to leave the track at the first sharp bend, over the gate to the right. From here, climb to the top of the hill to the south west, the tomb is on the summit.

Passing by through Killarney on my way home I thought I would pop by and see if it was possible to visit the circle. The farmer was walking up the lane so I was delighted to be given permission to go and see it.

My, my, my oh my... The area around the circle looks like its in the middle of a nuclear winter again, not a blade of grass left standing. Most of the tree cover around about half the henge has been cut down and thinned out, one tree has fallen directly onto one of the stones of the circle (though this may have been due to the storms) and to top it all off a large orange fibreglass ‘roof’ of something has been dumped inside the enclosure. I doubt things have ever been worse for this little circle. With some creativity I was able to get some nice shots of it, also some of the general state of the site.

Driving through the hills north of Kealkill, you could forget that your on the way to visit one fo the few excavated and restored stone rows in the south west, the scenery is incredible. Just as you pass a peacefull little lake in a natural amphitheatre you come to a small cross roads. Maughanasilly stone row is on the hillock to the right, overlooking the lake. The name mey be ridiculous but this is a seriously wonderful place. A small space just outside the gate is handy for parking and the site has a little, informative sign just inside the swinging gate. Visitors are welcome here and the site is very easy to access, though not for the disabled.

I arrived here just as the sun was re-appearing for a few minutes of glorious colour before sinking below the horizon, there are wide views across wild mountains to the north and west but no view to the east. To me, it looked like this row is very closely aligned to the sunset at midwinter, the sign suggests a lunar alignment.

The stones that remain standing are all similar but look bizarrely mismatched or arranged, they are all quite small, none above 1.5m. One lies prostrate on the south side but there doesn’t seem to be a gap for its socket, as if it had missed out on megalithic musical chairs.

I forgot to print off the directions below and made a complete yak of getting to the stones. I parked in a driveway and knocked on the door, there was noise inside but no-one answered. This is getting more common in the depths of rural Ireland. Anyway, I walked up a lane and then along the side of a small stream into another field. I then crossed a hedge and up in the corner I had to scale a wall at an open gate. At first glance over, there seemed to be no way in or out of the field but once you are near the stones you realise there are a  few gaps on the southern hedge.

The stones themselves? Wonderful! One massive, bulky hulk and two skinnier but still quite large accomplices. Like the big boss man and his two cronies. The setting is again spectacular, this is stunning countryside. The stones dont seem to have ever formed a rectangle, it must have been quite askew when complete (if there was a fourth stone) in much the same was as the comparable, but slightly less dramatic, arrangement at Lettergorman.

The weather continues to oscillate though many dramatic shifts, it rained quite a bit which meant constant wiping of the lens for the brief burst of sunshine that produced a magnificent rainbow.

As you drive up the road thats nearest to Dunbeacon stone circle, you see a brown information sign with ‘Standing Stones’ on it, pointing to this field. The driveway also has a ‘Parking’ sign there too! This is a nice pair of tall stones pointing (almost) at the stone circle on the hill opposite. They were felled but re-erected in the past so may not exactly align with their original axis. A large new house has been built just above them, perhaps this was the site of the church mentioned in TME? Access is very easy with a short walk up a driveway and then through a specially installed gate.

I’ve wanted to visit this row since I saw RedBrickDream’s photos here a year ago or more. The setting and the arrangement is just superlative, hats off to whoever chose this spot and picked the stones, they really had a very good eye.

The row is peculiar, in a funny kind of way it reminds me of those cartoons you see of the mother duck leading the ugly ducklings across the road. Its a little overgrown now since the older photos, whatever lived in this field must have ate that typical rush-like grass. The sheep that live here now sure dont. Someone also left one of those horrible large black plastic sheets that they cover bales with, lumped between the last, smallest stone and the second last. I tried removing it but that, and the massive digger a hundred yards away took away a little of the magic of the visit, just a little bit.

As in the other fieldnotes, this is a bugger to get to, the driveway past the old farmhouse is now a swimming pool and all the fields are serioulsy boggy. Bring wellies when you come, but do come.

This tomb is quite cute, its just sat there like an old farmer leaning against the wall watching the world and their cattle go by.

The capstone is very odd, as pointed out by Fourwinds a gleaming white ‘eye’ oggles you as you approach, you do indeed feel watched. It is very easily spotted from the road but the local roads are maze-like, if you’ve got a good map or a gps this is an easy, pleasant site to visit. Shame I got thoroughly rained on before I got my fill of photos.

Beltany after-noon 06/01/07

I remembered from last visit that you only need follow the signs from Raphoe to get here quickly and easily. Well, yet again another Donegal signpost has been molested. As you leave Raphoe, the brown sign on the grassy knoll should point to the right hand road from the fork, not straight on.

After asking a very enthusiastic walker I found my way back and parked up at the bottom of the lane, slipping into something more uncomfortable as I got out of the car. My walking boots and waterproofs. Walking up the lane I realised you can see the circle as you approach, this didn’t hit me last time because it was pitch black. Anyway, its a nice way to view the circle as a whole so check it out if your passing.

Arriving in the gate the light was absoltely perfect, strong low sun to the south and dark menacing clouds to the northwest. Fantastic! Arriving back at Beltany circle was exhilerating, I left in gloom the last time so didn’t really get a good view of its magnificence in good light. This is one site with serious vibes. As the clouds came and passed the shadows and shapes cast by the light were almost surreal, I felt like running and shouting and perhaps I did, there wasn’t another sinner for miles! This is what its all about.

I spent some time exploring what remains inside and I became more and more convinced that this was not just a simple pile of stones and earth inside, with the light raking over the protruding stones broken shapes and patterns appeared and dissapeared in the ruins. Whatever was once here truly must have been magnificent, why waste all those beautiful views?

05/01/07.

The bracken has died back once more or has been cleared, either way this was the best view of the site as I had ever seen. Not ‘mown’ or overgrown, just natural. I arrived well after dark and by the ample light of the near-full moon took around ten long exposures of the larger tomb before getting creeped out by the noises emanating from the barn behind and animals crawling though the undergrowth. This is a really great site.

What a wonderful monument! What superb scenery! Gortnavern is worth the trouble of tracking down, and there is some trouble.

The tomb itself has shifted in on itself but is really quite a fine example of the type, and the location couldn’t be better. IF the gorse was cut back a bit.

It’s not far at all from the village of Kerrykeel (called Carrowkeel on most maps) but the sign points in the wrong direction, this may have something to do with it being battered by shotgun pellets! After a while in the Irish countryside you learn to read the telltale signs that a sign has been turned the wrong direction and this one is of the more obvious type. I followed my GPS to the nearest road and this brought me to an accurate sign, I also spoke to the farmer on the lane and the little I could gather from his thickly accented directions was that you need boots. Well, bog standard now aren’t they? Well, yes, the signpost points you to a stream that was almost a foot deep after the recent rain.

Turning back onto the main road, I found the lane leading to the abandoned cottages. This way involves only some small streams, a number of tied gates, capsized trees blocking the lane, ankle deep mud, barbed wire and thick gorse bushes. Dont attempt this with kids or if your only popping in out of curiosity, only the most hardened stone seeker in the sturdiest of boots will happily take this trip. It is worth it.

There’s good news and bad news for this very nice stone, it has definitely deteriorated over the last number of years but I dont think it as bad as it seems from the photos taken without the aid of water or side lighting. When I arrived the sun was directly on it and there were very few markings visible, once the sun went down they started to appear before my eyes. The good news is that the ground has risen considerably around the base, I’d say about 10-15” of carved surface is safely underground, the rest would be so much clearer if the moss was removed (the bad news). A few hours with a toothbrush would do wonders for this charming slab, if there was a way of doing it without damaging the surface I’d love to see the result.

‘not easy to find’ says Fourwind’s visit notes, ‘Wellington boots are essential’ adds Anthony Weir on the Portal. Why oh why didn’t I take heed? This isnt easy to find or access but its very much worth the effort, with plenty of time on your hands you should find it ok but do make sure you’ve got good boots, not ten yards from the farm gate I was six inches in mud, including the organic kind.

The farmyard is very easy to find, I knocked on the door of the old house and just about five minutes later was giving up and moving on when I heard a very croaky ‘hello?!’ from the back yard and a blonde girl in her pyjamas and slippers poked her head around the corner. ‘Oh the stone with the markings on it? What time is it? God I’ve got a rotten hangover.. half two in the afternoon.. oh. The stone’s over there’ ‘passage tomb? thats a very fancy name for it.. I think there’s something further up the next field’. Oh yes, a great start! Twenty minutes and ten inches of sludge later I still hadnt found the chamber so there was no option but to phone up Fourwinds who kindly obliged with directions by proxy and some handy GPS co-ords.

The fields are all now barbed wired over and the stile has been removed so its a bit tricky, there’s also what looks like a motte (marked ‘rath’ on the map) near the road with trees all around it which had me on a wild goose chase. I think the map actually has the chamber marked as a rath also as there does indeed seem to be a large standing stone where the map has a second one marked.

The chamber is bigger than I pictured and its hard to imagine a roof over it, its very wide in comparison to the height of the chamber, like a smaller Fourknocks with no sub chambers. /the markings are very faded indeed and it took quite a while to bring them out with flash but running your fingers over them gives you a good feel for whats still visible, the moss has claimed most though.

I just saw this posting before I left Dublin for Clonmel this morning, nice coincidence! I have passed the sign for the stone many times without seeing it, it points to a side road to your right coming from Cashel towards Clonmel but the help ends there. I drove up and down the road and saw nothing, after the second time I just thought ‘sod it’ and went back up once more since the crossroads on the other end has a sign for Cashel too. I just managed to catch a glimpse of it in a field to the right, the first gate after the sharp Z bend.

The gate into the field is now locked and wrapped with barbed wire, what was once a stile was blocked up with thorny branches. Nice. From the road side its easy to see the stone and the truly awful brick surround, maybe they have a grey rhino in the field and need to protect the public but in either case this stone has had its style severely cramped, a foresty plantation looks like its just about to swallow it up now too! A real pity, this would have been a wonderful stone with stunning views.

Things seem to be different at the moment for Kenmare stone circle, maybe its just the off-season for tourists but the space allotted for the circle seems delightfully neglected compared to the manicured grass in the pics posted previously. The grass is uncut and untidy, in its partly secluded enclosure on a cold, gloomy and wet bank holiday morning you could just about imagine you were not really a stones throw from the town centre. From a certain angle you could stand with your back to the shrubs and things seemed almost wild.

It’s a nice circle, its a pity the views are blocked in every direction but in its slightly overgrown state it was a pleasant surprise, I wasn’t expecting too much. I thought the shrubs were the low, flowery kind in neat arrangements, the taller tree like evergreens are the biggest annoyance at the site apart from the many crisp packets and coke bottles under the boulder burial.

In the village of Bweeng (on the road between Donoghmore and Mallow) there is a large tourist information board stuck to a wall that you will miss coming from the south but is quite obvious on the way through the village from the north. Quite a number of the large amount of ancient sites in the area are described, this stone row was one of two ‘fine examples’ of the type, the other being An Seisear (or Beenalacht on the sign). ‘Well’ I thought, ‘if its anything like An Seisear it needs a look!’.

Its not easy to find, you have to approach the OS co-ords from the south, through a farm house with two very large and very noisy Great Danes (no sneaking past this farm!) so do ask for ‘the three stones’ at the house (w465926). I was brought down through three fields by the 10 year old son who played ‘catch’ with a stone while I frantically took pics before the sun slid behind Bweengduff mountain. He also showed me a disused lime kiln, a very odd structure indeed.

The three stones are wildly mis-matched, the larger is over 10ft and the other two are pretty similar at around 5ft. The larger stone is set perpendicular in section to the two other stones in the line. I couldn’t see the horizon too good in either direction to evaluate what they might mark. The ground here has been heavily eroded so it looks like there’s about a foot of old ground level clinging to the base of the stones, packing stones are clearly visible and all the stones lean this way and that.

The farmer was very interested in the stones and even gave me directions to visit the Nursetown Beg Stones nearby which I had not heard of before.

I stopped by here on my way back from a flying visit to Cork, it looked quite close to the road on the map and near to a track. I hadn’t stopped before even though I pass every couple of weeks, the recent photos make it look like a bomb crater. I was feeling a little optimistic that things may have improved for this little circle but unfortunately the optimism didn’t pay off. This circle really has had it rough, and the damage seems to be ongoing, the interior of the circle is a trampled pond with jumbled stones sticking out all over the place. The outside isn’t any tidier but despite the damage and disfiguration it’s still possible to make out that this was a very nice circle with an unusual pair of portal stones. Or, maybe I was only able to see its former glory because I had seen photos of it in a more complete state on Anthony Weir’s site (as in link below)...

I didn’t enter the field that the circle was in as it had quite a few bullocks in it and a whopping great bull who made a sneaking advance and then a full scale charge, I had one of those horrible sinking feelings that the electric fence wouldn’t ‘work’ and for a moment I think the bull had the same thought judging by his fit of rage. I didn’t delay making my way back to the track only to find that the bullocks in the opposite field were not too keen on me and my tripod either and to my horror, their fence had already been trampled to the ground... If your planning on visiting here, be very cautious!

Well this is an odd one! There’s been so much destruction its hard to imagine what originally stood here, but its not anything like a mis-interpretation of a ruined kerb from a cairn as I had thought in the back of my mind. The stones are massive, much larger than I expected, Burl says four are standing but on the ground its a bit more complicated. There are indeed four large stones, as tall, if not taller, than those around Newgrange but only one is quite as bulky. These stand in a sort of bent and stretched square but there are also large stones prostrate inside the area of the circle, to one side is a pile of field clearance or a ruined wall which has a large block sitting almost upright with what looks like packing stones underneath.
Beside another large upright there are two low stones, one about 6ft long and the other much smaller but they seem to arc around on a tangent from what would have been the circle. Very odd. They are much smaller than the upright beside them and look very mismatched but original nonetheless. There are lots of large and small slabs just visible around the place, inside and outside the circle and there is what looks like a large pit surrounded by heaps of large stones (field clearance?) off to the west of the circle, about 150 yards maybe. I didn’t venture over here because of a large herd of tetchy cows and calves watching my every move. Didn’t see any of the rock art Martin Brennan referred to but I think some was carted off to the National Museum in Dublin. Gave up looking in the gloomy light, not a great time to photograph or hunt rock carvings!

The owner of the land seemed ok with visitors but the directions were vague enough to border on the unhelpful so a bit hard to judge. Seemed cheery though so do call in as you have to go through his yard and down a very, very muddy track. Wear good boots and a smile and you should be alright!