ryaner

Travelling around megalithic Ireland a couple or three questions of the imagined tomb-wreckers have frequently arisen: If you’re going to destroy one of these ancient sites, why not obliterate and eradicate it totally? Why leave the scant remnants, the vague outline, of what once was? Is it because mid-destruction you got visited by some phantom in your bed that made you desist? In the end, it’s possible that you got from here what you came for and sated you said fuckit, leave what’s left and who cares? It’s always puzzling – the disrespect shown is sometimes total, and those sites are lost forever, but it’s at places like here in Ravensdale where enough remains to intrigue and tantalise.

I’ll quote in full the description from the Louth Inventory (copyright Dublin: Stationery Office, 1991): “This court-tomb has suffered considerable damage by blasting, and drill holes for dynamite are visible in a number of shattered stones. It consists of a roughly trapezoidal cairn orientated NNE-SSW, incorporating at its N end the inner end of a broad court and the scant remains of a gallery. The N limit of the court is defined by a facade stone at the W, indicating overall court dimensions of about 5.5m deep by 7m wide. Eight stones mark the inner end of the court, four at the W and three at the E. Two of these form the entrance jambs to the gallery which had at least two chambers. The N chamber 3m long and about 1.5m wide, is delimited by two side stones at the W and one at the E. This is separated from the rest of the gallery by a pair of jambs. Beyond these the continuation of the gallery is represented by a single orthostat at the E side and there is no back stone. A field fence curves around the N and W sides of the monument.”

Blasting? Dynamite? So post 1866 then, and more likely well into the 20th century. We’ve heard of this before, in Carrowkeel, but there’s doubts about that. There it was said to be part of the excavation, far-fetched maybe; here it seems that it was simple destruction and the re-use of the stones and antiquarian niceties be-damned. And yet, as mentioned above, they left us what’s here, unprotected as it is. Bizarre.

The small charms of the court with its almost symmetrical arms; the entrance jambs; behind those their chamber segmenting twins, all speak of a classic multi-chambered gallery, unmistakably an ancient burial place. Almost total wreckage of court tombs is quite common in North Louth and the Cooley peninsula it seems. Contrast that with the near complete tombs Ballymacdermot, Clontygora and Annaghmare in neighbouring county Armagh. I’ve been around these parts a lot in the last few years but had always been put off by that Inventory note but I have to say I’m glad to have finally bit the bullet. It’s not that bad of a site compared to others around, just that you wish they hadn’t trashed the place so badly.

There’s not much positive to say here, except that I’m glad I made the effort. The main remains of the tomb, a photo of which can be seen in the Archaeological Survey of County Louth, are in danger of being lost forever in a dense tangle of hazel, bramble and scrub vegetation.

The plan in the above mentioned book shows an interesting court tomb, with a main single-chambered gallery and three lateral chambers, these last being the only remains in any way visible. Shame really, and not unexpected, but disappointing all the same.

The Spinans Hill Iron Age Hillfort complex comprises two hillforts; one on Spinans Hill itself and the other on Brusselstown Hill, both reputedly encompassed in a lower, massive fortification surrounding the two with a circumference of about 5 kilometres. This, if it exists, would cross 11 townlands. These are, clockwise from the north-west: Eadestown Hill, Ballyhubbock Lower, Ballyhubbock Upper, Castlesallagh, Coolamadra, Brusselstown, Castlequarter, Moorstown, Spinans Hill, Spinans East and Spinans Middle. The summit of Spinans Hill has a cairn cemetery with six cairns and is our target today.

I’ve explored this area quite a bit and always pronounced it as Spinans as in ‘spin’ but meeting a farmer whose land we had to pass through in Castlesallagh he pronounced it as Spynans, as in ‘spine’. The route up is not clear either. I’ve scouted around the west and south of the hill in the past and not found any easy way. Thank science for satellites; there is a track that begins at the 150m contour in Castlesallagh that traverses two fields owned by the aforementioned friendly farmer. It enters state forestry and is public access and brings you high up the hill before you must cross some heathland to gain the summit.

It’s a mostly gentle zigzag climb to the summit of Spinans at 410m over a distance of about 3 kilometres. Doesn’t sound like much but it’s the most strenuous jaunt I’ve done since falling ill last October. Slightly daunted but feeling good, the weather spurs us on – after what seems like 10 months of continuous rain, the sun breaks through and stays warm enough to have us shouldering our jackets. High up on the hill the the track runs out and we cross a steep bit of felled forestry. Then over a fence and onto some wild heathland and we’re almost there.

All the while the views have really opened up – the whole of the Glen of Imaal ranges behind us to the north-east, on over to Lugnaquilla, cloud-free today as it was when we climbed it last June. Keadeen broods over and dominates Brusselstown to our east. The forestry on the spur between the two hillforts doesn’t allow for us to track the massive encompassing fortification, but I think we encountered some of it on the east side on Spinans – low, ragged walling with some very large boulders snaking across the hillside for as far as the terrain allows us to see. Not long after we’re up into the cairnfield.

There are six cairns here, four in Ballyhubbock Upper townland; one, the largest, straddling the townland boundary of Ballyhubbock Upper and Spinans Hill; and the last, the most southerly, in Spinans Hill townland itself. None of which would have meant anything to the tomb builders, for that is what they are, tombs – a small prehistoric cairn cemetery. I get the notion that the trashed main mound, the one that straddles the ‘modern’ boundaries, was the first, and that the satellite tombs followed, possibly centuries after, who knows?

The level of destruction of the main tomb is almost total. There’s what may be the remains of a subsidiary chamber in its north-east quadrant, but any remains of a passage and chamber, for it is claimed to be a passage grave, are long gone. It is recognisable as a large cairn, but only just and is nearly flattened.

The small cairn to its south, in Spinans Hill townland, is being swallowed by the bog – the townland boundary demarcated by a fence crossing the main cairn looking like it separates two separately owned properties, the northern of which has been drained for grazing, the southern left to the wonders of sphagnum. The view across to Baltinglass Hill with its own megalithic wonders is gorgeous.

The northern four Ballyhubbock Upper cairns are all small, with only one showing a diminutive and distinct cist-like chamber at its centre. This has some possible kerbstones, as do two others. Three cairns are in a roughly north-south line, the fourth with the chamber to the east of the middle. They are all quite flat, but as with a lot of these upland cairns, the surrounding terrain has risen since they were first built and that, along with centuries of plundering, means they’re not much to look at, though they were obviously more distinct and proud of the surrounding terrain in the past.

The top of Spinans, with a long and fairly broad north-south expanse, reminded me of the top of Knocklayd (Cnoc Leithid – the hill of the slope or expanse) in Antrim. The ‘cemetery’ is closer to the southern end of this. It’s all said to be within Spinan’s own hillfort which in turn is encompassed in the massive fortifications along with Brusselstown, as mentioned earlier. I really felt that I was back in the game after this successful visit, having been defeated by access issues on more than one occasion in the past and having had doubts about whether I’d ever get back out there again.

Visited 25/7/23

The tomb is now completely inundated with vegetation to the point where it is hidden from the world. Truly shocking neglect of an important heritage site.

Trapped in a small enclosure, surrounded on three sides by a massive quarry, but still worth visiting. The tomb lies in a northern ’spur’ of the field immediately east of the quarry entrance. The structure of the chamber is very evident and was constructed with massive, shaped blocks of stone. This would have been a fine wedge tomb once upon a time – now it seems to be just a forgotten relic, left there only because it’s a ‘protected’ monument. I’m glad we decided to check it out.

A three metre tall, roadside standing stone on the road from Ardara to Kilclooney, just to the south of the Owenea river. A ruined farmhouse stops you spotting it as you travel north to Kilclooney, but glance over your shoulder just before the bridge and it’s unmissable. A large, hefty block of a stone, wonderful and strong and towering, slightly tilting to the west. I wondered how it could have survived standing all these years, and how much of it was below ground.

An almost urban monument, about a kilometre above busy Killybegs harbour. Tucked in under a thorn tree at the bottom of a long driveway. It’s really quite impressive, though low and squat, and it has its own fógra. The modern driveway almost truncates the front of the tomb. The Survey says that this driveway “… is a raised trackway, now disused.” Well, seems like things have changed since publication 20 years ago. No matter – the landowners arrived while we were there and paid us no heed.

Typically aligned WSW-ENE, with the entrance at the west, a displaced septal slab now blocks any view into the chamber from here. The northern side is all grass-covered cairn material, as is most of the southern side, except a gap at the western end which gives a view into the 3 metre long chamber. A single roofstone covers most of this and affords a handy shelter to any small furry creatures in need. I once disturbed a tiny resting fawn along the banks of the Glendassan river while on a bullaun hunt, startling both him and me to the extent that I’m overly cautious now when exploring secluded sites. I needn’t have worried here, though I never got in far enough to be 100% sure.

I think this is a wedge tomb. This despite the lack of any sort of double-walling. Or any ante-chamber or portico. But no worries. I can go with Portal tomb (?), as in the Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Volume VI, County Donegal. It just doesn’t feel like a portal tomb. Especially in the shadow (or in the light) of what lies a kilometre to the north-east. But then again it might be neither

That said, this is a fine little monument. It’s environment has changed since the publication of the Survey (2002, but the photo may be from well before that) and indeed from Bogman’s visit 11 years ago. It’s in semi-bogland, occasionally used for cattle, about 250 metres north of a small boreen off the Ardara to Kilclooney road.

A single, quite delicate, granite capstone/roofstone covers a small chamber almost 1.5 metres square. It’s set into a mound that rises maybe half a metre above the surrounding terrain. It’s possible that the chamber floor is deeper than these dimensions suggest but I didn’t check, the brambles and other growth discouraging inspection. The gabled backstone is a noticeable attraction and the whole monument offers a serene piece of megalithic charm.

A kilometre south-west of Dunkineely is this mighty fine stone pair. Situated in someone’s garden (if it’s yours, I knocked on your door and got no reply), it’s aligned ESE-WNW, the southern stone 2.3 metres tall, the northern 1.9. It’s situated on the neck of land at the top of the long and thin peninsula that leads down to Saint John’s Point, 8 kms to the south-west. There are fine views west towards Slieve League.

The site from whence the townland gets its name (presumably, as there’s another cairn nearby), about 5 kilometres east of Dungiven and by the side of the road. It’s in a large, narrow, sloping pasture and is quite a presence, though secondary in most of the popular literature in comparison to the denuded Boviel 800 metres north of here. The views south into the Glenshane Valley are fantastic, with the Sperrins brooding beyond in the distance.

This is an example of an almost complete wedge tomb, yet to be plundered, its chamber probably still covered. The facade, facing south-west, and some of the kerbstones are visible, and there seems to be some clearance dumped on top. The road above, the fast-moving and unforgiving A6 main Derry to Belfast road, is hidden from view and you could while away some time here, the sheep timid enough.

This place begs a couple of questions, the first of which is well rehearsed: Is it always important to remember that what we see at sites like Ballyrenan are the denuded, skeletal, interior remains of an earthen and stony mound? And does what remains at Ballyrenan cast doubt on that critical assumption in the first question? Because, like at Ballyvennaght in Antrim, there are two tombs here, separate but part of the same monument. At Ballyvennaght the entrance to the still standing western tomb is to the west, outwards from the cairn/mound – the collapsed eastern tomb is said to have a possible backstone at the west of the capstone so it must have opened to the east, again outwards from the cairn/mound.

At Ballyrenan, both chamber openings face east, meaning the western chamber would face into the mound/cairn. There is the possibility that there was come sort of central court in the intervening space between the front of the western tomb and the rear of the eastern. So was this a mongrel combination of a court and portal tomb? The fact that the western tomb has two chambers could lead you down that rabbit hole. But all of these musings are for later – today the sun is shining and this fantastic monument is right beside the country lane.

The large farm buildings to the west of the tomb do detract from the vibe a bit. The farmer’s there working away and gruffly gives us the go-ahead to park in the driveway. And then it’s just dive right in. It’s not massively spectacular in terms of size but this place has something else, something mysterious and deeply affecting. The thought taken to form the construction and the skill to complete it are impressive. And yet doubts remain – was the western tomb messed about with and re-constructed sometime after the supposed denudation of the cairn/mound? Because there’s a couple or three things amiss, or unique, or odd about the western tomb, aside from it facing into the mound, if there ever was one.

One: the skewed ‘lintel’ over the portal stones, propping up the capstone but also tilting it down to the north as it rests neatly on the southern, but precariously on the northern portal. Two: the stone that rests on the north-eastern sidestone of the eastern, front chamber that juts out by at least a metre and serves to counter the tilt caused by the portal ‘lintel’. The capstone of the rear chamber also rests on this stone. Three: The rear, sealed chamber itself. But sure what am I cribbing about? The easy, quiet backwoods atmosphere allowed us to engage with and immerse in the monument for as long as we wished. I couldn’t resist attacking the ivy that is beginning to colonise the northern portal of the western tomb, the physical action bringing the engagement to another level.

The ‘lesser’ eastern tomb has its own charms too. The stone that I thought to be a recessed, half-height doorstone, but actually a septal stone, is split longitudinally by a seam of quartz, discovered after another judicious bit of ivy clearing. The backstone is there, as are the two sidestones and both portals – all that’s missing is the capstone. The excavators discovered a small, cist-like second chamber at the back of the main chamber but we didn’t notice. If that was the case and it’s also double-chambered, then I would be leaning towards two separate monuments and two separate mounds. Either way it would have been an impressive, close to medium-sized dolmen when complete.

Ballyrenan is another must-see Tyrone site. I’d been in the vicinity a couple of times in the last few years and had neglected it for some reason, probably because of the multitude of other fantastic places in the county. Don’t make the same mistake!

There’s just no getting away from how colossally weird these stones are – you feel that anything that you say about them would not in any way do them justice. It’s a bit like being confronted by Munch’s Scream, a raw shout from the core of us, pointing to our own ultimate annihilation and rendering us silent. They are both ghostly and otherworldly, and weirdly human at the same time, leaving you with your consolatory pondering. I don’t have much else to say, just that you have to see them.

The Lusty More man is obviously the lesser of the two here but, on its own, would have you travelling miles to see it. Faded now, it’s power waning, and placed so close to the ‘Janus’ figure, you get quickly distracted. However, all is not well at Caldragh – to my untrained eye, the Janus figure is beginning to erode badly, almost crumbling in places. I would understand entirely if it was moved indoors. That said, it would be a shame if it happened – the experience of having this place all to yourself, to contemplate the utter strangeness of the carvings, is one of the highlights of megalithic Ireland.

Like the shattered, semi-devoured carcass of a beached whale, the remains of Cavantillcormick dual court tomb sit on a slight, boggy ridge, scattered stones jutting above the turf and what’s left of the cairn in a barely discernible pattern. I’d approached the monument from the neighbouring field entrance about 250 metres to the south-east, gone down into a ditch and clambered up over a wall and then traversed the marshy ground to be confronted by what is a wreck of a tomb that manages to retain just a small bit of dignity.

Thankfully what does remain doesn’t seem in any danger of being removed, for the moment. Much of the poorer land in Fermanagh, and Tyrone for that matter, seems to be in the constant process of improvement. You would hope that any ideas of that here would take the neolithic court tomb into account, but there’s no guarantee of that. Cavantillycormick (probably Cabhán Tulaigh Cormaic ‘hollow of Cormac’s hill’) and its surrounds has a mix of pasturage and a small amount of tillage and land hunger may return.

You could despair at the destruction here but of the remains of the two tombs, the western is better, with a displaced roofstone over its chamber. The sense of tragedy is increased at the eastern remains, two, maybe three stones left standing. Still, there’s a sense here of something that is yet worthwhile. The ruggedness, the barely contained wildness, the raw beauty of the surroundings, and the wreckage of the ancient memorial, all combine into a small celebration of the determination of those who eked out their existence here all the way back six thousand years ago.

The scant remains here lie one and a half kilometres west of the centre of Omagh town. The deep spring green of the fertilised fields is almost off-putting. Ballyrenan is only 12 kilometres northwards so why bother? Nothing much is visible from the road and at first the layout of the SMR map has me confused, almost enough to give up. Then, oriented correctly, I leg it south, uphill and close to the field boundary.

The very box-like/cist-like remains, incorporated into the field bank, get inundated in the summer – now, in mid-April, it’s still difficult to see the southern part of the tomb, vicious, dry brambles from last year still tangling two of the orthostats. They say it’s the possible remains of a court tomb – various scattered stones could be this or that. I didn’t hang about much, Ballyrenan too much of a distraction.

The A505 runs between Omagh and Cookstown and is a fast and unforgiving road. It’s also littered with megaliths to its north and south. Heading west from An Creagán, we pulled up on the northern verge at the bottom of the field. I didn’t wonder who might have been interred in the tomb we were visiting. It was just another ruin, taken in on our way to better places, but revered nonetheless.

It’s tucked in under, and almost incorporated into, an ancient but later field boundary. It’s aligned east/west, with the front at the west. The map says megalith, the SMR court tomb. Any remains of the shallow court are difficult to discern – some of the stones here seem to be dumped field clearance, though the field is little more than a bog now, poorly drained. Mulderg rises to the north-west, scarred terribly with the gouges of quarrying. South-east is a long expanse of heather covered bog.

Most of the gallery sidestones remain, presuming there was only one chamber. A laterally placed stone on the southern side may be a segmenting jamb. There is no stone opposite it at the north so there’s no telling. Two matched stones further east and no closing stone at the rear leads to the conclusion that the rear of a second chamber may have been robbed. Two stones, one splayed out over the entrance stones and another thrown down in the ‘court’ may be roof stones or lintels.

I doubt this place ever fully dries out. It’s not a showy sort of place and is almost stranded there 200 metres from the road as the traffic flies past. I had no huge expectations and I can’t say I was either under- nor overwhelmed. It’s a small relic in an area with many more ‘important’ sites but might be worth your efforts, just bring some wellies.

Anthony Weir, in his Early Ireland: A Field Guide, published in 1980, mentions that this is across the road from the court tomb. He must have seen it in its original environment back then. It’s now in An Creagán Visitors Centre in Tyrone, about 12 kilometres to the south-west.

Behind the centre is a small duck pond and a kids’ playground. To the right of the pond a set of steps rises on the right and brings you on a number of looped walks through the bogland. To the left of the steps, almost tucked into the bank, is the reconstructed tomb.

An extensive excavation was undertaken before dismantling the tomb and if you compare it to the old photograph (link below) you can see that they remained faithful to the original. It’s actually a quite impressive little monument, with all its sidestones, a backstone and two roofstones, with a ruined antechamber, but is, I would imagine, now used as a climbing frame for the energetic sprogs that populate the locale.

West of the village of the same name, down a country lane and up on a drumlin ridge, is this small relic. It’s like the opening of a day, an invitation to explore further and deeper, little over a metre tall, its fallen neighbour invisible to the south. North from the prominence, above the Creggan boglands, the Sperrins float invitingly. The climb has taken the breath out of me on this, my first venture out of the car since Batterstown. I didn’t touch it, satisfied enough to view, and to anticipate what lay ahead.

Right up in the north-east corner of Lower Lough Erne is the town of Kesh. It’s a pretty nondescript place, somewhere I wouldn’t be keen on passing too much time in… except that it has this mighty and mighty fine standing stone to its east in Drumnarullagh townland. It’s visible from the road about 120 metres into the field, well over 2 metres tall and 1.8 metres wide and is quite majestic, all alone there, with not much else around except the remains of a riverside rath about another 100 metres to the north.

This is a sorry sight these days. We drove along the farm track – I knew there were farm buildings close by – and we were ready to ask for permission. We met a farm worker, not the owner, and he said go ahead. The photo on the NISMR shows the lintel and jambstones in a clearing and I had hopes that we were in for a bit of a treat. Alas no – were we here any later in the year it seems that we wouldn’t get to see anything.

The beautiful altar-like entrance, with one metre tall entrance jambstones both flanked by other supporting orthostats, all covered by a lintel, is all that’s visible and identifiable. The whole area is trashy, unkempt and unloved. On the plan at the NISMR, three stones form the southern gallery walls, with a laterally placed stone forming a sill and separating it into two chambers and then a backstone sealing the rear. All this was hard to check out with all the growth and detritus about the place.

It was one of those places that I didn’t feel like hanging around in, frustrated that the landowners so transparently don’t seem to care about the monument on their land, but not wishing to have a confrontation about the neglect.

In a field beside a road with fast moving traffic, I don’t have a lot to say about this as I only viewed it from the roadside. It’s the lesser one of two in the townland, the better one being about a kilometre west of north of here. There do seem to be few socketed stones but any circular form is difficult to ascertain from the bank at the edge of the field. Another of the many stone circles in the Tyrone/Fermanagh/Derry region.

This was a cinch after the mystery tour over at Tawnydorragh 3 kms to the west – you can drive right up to it. The tarmac runs out after about 700 metres from the main road but the track is relatively well maintained and we’re in a 4-by-4 anyway. East of here is the large expanse of Lough Bradan forest, about 20 square kilometres of relatively high ground. The track becomes undriveable at the tomb and continues up into the forest. Judging from the map you could continue along this way and bend around to the south and find Ally court tomb, about 4 kilometres to the south-east as the crow flies.

Scraghy is badly ruined. The collapse of the huge capstone, 2.4 metres by 3.5 metres, has caused most of the chamber stones to shatter and I didn’t even attempt to try and work out which is what, but judging from some of the remains I estimate that the tomb once stood over 2 metres tall. So a serious piece of neolithic construction.

Then there’s the over two metre tall standing stone 7 metres to the ‘rear’ of the chamber. What with there being little evidence of a cairn footprint, this is a peculiarity. It is, on its own, a fairly serious megalith, something that you would go out of your way to visit. Plonked here where it is, it’s quite possible to imagine that it was part of a singular monument, possibly a revetting stone at the back of the cairn.

Thirty metres south-west of the large standing stone is another small megalith, this time a small cist with just two small sidestones still extant. It’s in a very boggy, clumpy area and I did a fairly serious tumble back there. Even with there being very little growth at this time of the year, conditions were not ideal but it was good to find the little guy, huddled away back there almost lost to the world.

Scraghy was well worth a visit. I’m guessing that, in its ruinous condition, it’s not high on many peoples’ priority list. But the area, though very accessible, retains a wild and inhospitable atmosphere, a barely tamed corner of West Tyrone with plenty to keep the megalithic explorer interested.

Second time at Drumskinney, slightly less underwhelmed this time. The polar opposite to Montiaghroe stone circle back down the road, its post-excavation restoration leaves you cold – well you can’t have it both ways, so put up or shut up I guess. But you could have a middle way, which seems to be occurring naturally as mother nature begins to weather the enclosure and moss starts to encroach onto the gravel and the stones begin to look less scrubbed.

It’s always worth remembering on a visit to the Beaghmore complex of circles, rows and cairns, the good fortune that allows us to see and appreciate so much. Once discovered and uncovered it made archaeological and commercial sense to open it up to the public. One can’t help but be reminded of that good fortune on a visit here. Drumskinney, 1.5 kms up the road, seems to have gotten all the attention in this area, leaving the circle here to be lost to the bog.

It’s said that there are “24 limestone boulders protruding above the bog surface to heights varying from 0.05-0.75m”. I made out maybe 8 of these at best today and maybe 3 of the 11 stones said to make up two tangential rows on the eastern arc of the ring. I had hoped for more – yet still the place retains something (is it only because of foreknowledge?), the flattened interior of the circle evident, the vibe of all that wild, boggy, early spring growth creating an energetic, almost electric, buzz. Worth a butchers if you’re visiting the row nearby, but in winter or early spring only.

The most satisfying of the 3 monuments in Montiaghroe that we saw today, this roadside, three-stone stone row is hard to miss if you’re in the vicinity, maybe heading for Drumskinney stone circle up the road. The ground around the stones is boggy and is thought to contain more traces of other arrangements. The stones rise in height from SSE to NNW, the tallest over head height and almost huggable. The views are spacious to the east and south, Rotten mountain a prominent rise of the ground to the north-east.

You could easily give this one a miss and not regret anything. Worryingly, there seems to be even less stones here now than when Nucleus visited 10 years ago. What does remain are 2 stones, one .5 of a metre tall and another, choked and surrounded by a holly tree, 1.4 metres tall. The plans at the NISMR show 4 embedded stones with reports of there having been 6 in the 1940s.

Killadeas modern church and ancient graveyard is a strange little site on the eastern shores of Lower Lough Erne, about 8 kms north of Enniskillen. There are three peculiarities that may be of interest here, and one that’s definitely not for here, but deserves a mention. This latter is the Bishop’s stone, an eerie, four-sided carved, hunched figure, in relief of one side with a face to the north. It’s the best thing here but alas it’s a no-no.

The other three stones are: a relatively innocuous standing stone; a grave slab with dubious cupmarks on its back side and; probably the only true prehistoric relic, a holed stone, with half the hole embedded in the turf. The main A47 Enniskillen to Kesh road is right over the hedge and this is a fast road but there is space to park a car and access seems to be welcomed with signage and a small pedestrian gate.

The Movarran Road in Fermanagh heads north-west out of Drumskinney hamlet at the junction of Montiaghroe Road, about 700 metres south-west of the famous stone circle. It bends north in a pine plantation and heads towards the Donegal border. There is the illusion today that nothing much seems to happen in this part of North Fermanagh – a definite backwater of poor and poorly drained land, sheep farming being the mainstay, some better pasture dotted amongst the ever rising sphagnum moss.

We had made our decision to head directly north for Tawnydorragh and to work our way back down south, slightly distracted by the monuments first at Montiaghroe and then at Drumskinney, before making our way to the fringes of the forest that contained our real target. The townland itself is bordered to the north-west by Lettercran townland, Co. Donegal, not 200 metres from the rear of the tomb. However, there’s a kilometre-and-a-half to traverse before reaching there. The Scraghy road in Donegal looks like it could provide closer access, but the Termon river, which is the border, didn’t seem fordable, so we chose the forest entrance on the Movarran road.

The relief to be out again starts to ease into our spirits as we move deeper into the forest. The track heads up north-east for a short while, then north at a t-junction, twisting a bit and bending back north-west again and we spy a fox not 20 feet away in the scraggy grass. He ain’t impressed by us and skulks up towards the treeline for better cover. The track ends and we’re on dodgier ground as we head north again after another t-junction, but we know what we’re after and we pretty much know where it is, thanks to the tech gods, so our pace stays steady and even quickens the closer we get. And yet the trees are now denser, the old photo from the 70s or 80s that I saw at the NISMR that promised views all around useless.

We end up in a gully between two ridges and it’s obvious that the tomb is on one or the other. Wanting it to be on the northern one, where the sun seems to penetrate the pines, proves to be pointless – it’s on the more southerly. We burst through into the clearing from the east to be confronted by what appears to be a pile of hugely moss-covered stones, with the facade of the tomb to its right. This pile turns out to be sawn logs from the three trees were allowed to grow behind the entrance jambs in the first chamber of the gallery. At this time of the year the sun never gets high enough to penetrate the trees surrounding the clearing, but the benefit of being here now is that the growth has died back enough for us to be able to examine the remains. This is an isolated spot and we got the feeling that nobody had been here for a very long time.

The stones of the monument are satisfyingly blocky and imposing. The court was probably of the shallow variety, though only two of its stones now remain. The lintel that covered the two entrance jambs has fallen backwards into the chamber, partially held up by the southern sidestone and the tree stumps. The jambs are nearly a metres and a half tall, leading into a six metre long, two-chambered gallery. All of the southern rear chamber wall is missing – the second stone of the front chamber is weirdly eroded with runnels and wrinkles. The encrustation of the stones with mosses, grass and lichens at first had me confused – what were the stones holding up the lintel doing in the position of blocking the gallery entrance? And then it became clear with a touch – they’re rotting tree stumps, left there to stop the lintel from collapsing fully.

The rear stone of the gallery is gabled, speculated on as pointing to a corbelled roof – I guess I can go along with that – it’s pleasing either way. The atmosphere here is still and quiet, the glade inviting exploration and contemplation, but I can’t help wishing that the trees weren’t there, opening up the views – the old photo, maybe from the eighties, shows how the tomb was built on the prominence/escarpment, with some cairn kerbing visible at the rear, both to the north and south. I mooched in under the pine trees and saw some of this. My mate Thomas went further back there, down to the Termon river, reporting back that the river was in spate – just as well we didn’t try to get here from that invitingly short way. Tawnydorragh is one of those places that demands a certain level of commitment, rewarding the adventurous with a satisfaction that isn’t replicated by the easier, more accessible sites.

Another Patrick (Patrician) site and another long cairn, scooped out on its longer axis like at the cairn of the cats 2 kilometres to the south-east, only this time a portal tomb, with the main chamber at the east and then two subsidiary, cist-like chambers at the west.

Nestled in a clearing of a pine forest, a monument in state care with a small car park to its south, you get the sense that it’s never going to be high on most peoples’ itineraries, a lonely haven of quiet escape. The northbound track up through the forest is waterlogged and there is a small, forded stream to traverse before the tomb is revealed through the trees.

The cairn heads away eastwards up a slight incline, the two subsidiary chambers at its rear, western end prominent with huge blocky stones. They are both very box-like with no discernible entrance so maybe two cists inserted into the cairn at a later date than the initial construction. It was excavated in 1899 but I’m not sure if the finds were ever carbon-dated in more modern times. Strikingly, the cored remains of the cairn mirror the remains down the road at Carnagat.

25 metres up along the gash in the cairn is a small portal dolmen/chamber. Both portals remain, recessed by about 2 metres from the front facade of the cairn in court tomb fashion. They’re not the most robust portals I’ve ever seen. The northern stone has fallen southwards and rests on the southern stone. Behind them is a large box-like chamber. Presumably there was a capstone over the portals once upon a time, balanced on the sidestones of the very cist-like chamber.

One that got away the last time we were here, back in July last year. We’d managed to get to Glengesh portal tomb about 800 metres ENE. It’s all rolling reclaimed pasture and fairly marginal land hereabouts, with maybe some tillage. 1.2 kilometres west of here at Kilknock is a small hill with a small cairn, said now to be a wedge tomb, which we’ll have to come back to – our attempts today were blocked by some pretty steep and, in places, marshy ground.

Knockennis court tomb is ruined. It’s 4 fields in from the road, along a farm track with two gates. I guess I was expecting something better, an idea planted erroneously a while back. Anyhow, I’m glad I came, the remains still recognisable as the chamber/s of a megalithic tomb aligned classically north-east/south-west with the possible remains of a court at the north-east end. The drystone field boundary wall that passes through it north to south is unhelpful, but does add a certain ambience. Maybe one for the completists only.

There are some places that are just humbling, that evaporate the musty, strangling cobwebs of cynicism and arrogance in a barely noticeable instant, unregistered until you’re back home and reflective, all the while they’re working their silent magic, lending you something you only barely realise you needed. This is one of those places.

It seems that the accepted, received wisdom is that this place was once a ‘temple of the druids’ (whatever that means), visited by that most famous Welshman on his full-on conversion therapy trip/tour of our small island, powering through a major enough set for the local denizens to be convinced to re-name the place in his honour.

Nobody ever completely bought it though, temporary temporality so to speak – but that’s to say that those who came before the saint might have known more, or different, which I don’t believe they did. And not because I feel the need to justify the site or not – no, the place is the place before I say anything about it, fine with or without me and my beliefs, or anyone else’s for that matter.

There’s a car-park east of the site at Altdaven Road with a couple of ‘explanatory’ boards. The map is crude but handy. You descend into Altdaven Woods to the west and then down deeper to the north. There’s no rush but anticipation quickens the step. Straight ahead at the bottom and up along the stairs and path through the trees and along the thin south/north ridge. Good fortune had it that the sun was out, penetrating the tree cover in places, the dappled light adding to the sense of mystery. It’s always a bonus when you have a place to yourself, imagination unleashed.

Not quite at the summit is the chair, it’s back to you behind a pair of trees, standing proud and tall and spooky amongst many other outcrops and boulders. It’s not very deep into the woods and the road is visible from the perch, but we could have been on another planet as far as we noticed. Swiftly we were lost in the wonder of the place, clambering here and there and down to the well. It’s quite steep and vertiginous but no matter, the rag tree adds to the magic.

The flat stone of the ‘well’ has more that just the bullaun in its south-west corner – there’s another large cup-mark towards its centre. There are offerings everywhere – little fern covered niches in the side of the ridge with photos of loved ones and mass cards, the rag tree (ignore the covid face-coverings), coins beside the bullaun and the ubiquitous tea-lights. But none of it matters – the place is a delight, an almost semi-tropical, dripping green wonderland. Spellbound we marvelled, for a while anyway before we let ‘reality’ intrude. We could have stayed all day and not met anybody, but we decided not to.

There’s a couple of plans of this site on the NISMR and combined with the note there, I was expecting something of substance. Alas, what does remain now is almost totally overgrown, even now in January, and impossible to interpret, except for the most southerly stone, said to be a flanker of the south-facing court. Despite that, it was worth coming here, it being one of those barren, wrecked sites that tugs at the heartstrings that you come across regularly and are glad to bear witness to, in the midst of seemingly wilful neglect and ignorance.

Northbound on the R186 in Monaghan turns into Tyrone and the B83 at Tanderagee and the Fury river and you’d barely notice, only you do. The man with the commercial vehicle sales and service business bang on the border must be jurisdictionally flexible, elastic even. From here, as the crow flies a kilometre west, is the cat’s cairn, Carn na gCat. In rough terrain, horse shit in evidence, but no horses, precious little could have been produced since the bog grew.

But the ancestors were here. And they left us Carn na gCat, an almost symmetrical dual court tomb, embedded in a long cairn much of which remains, two metres tall in places. Partially excavated in 1899, it’s a monument in state care now, care which it seems is not easy to give lately by the looks of the growth – fortunately we’re here in winter, and we have our wellies. The fenced in track down to the site is waterlogged, the courts and chambers still not visible.

Rapidly the fences end and you’re in the court of the cats, the almost perfect north-eastern semi-circle entrance welcoming you in. The two Clontygora-esque shouldered stones flanking the jambs are striking – asymmetrical, but sure why not? But that’s where the asymmetry ends – everything after that seems planned, geometric, mirrored, until you emerge at the south-west end and its less spectacular court. Between the two courts are four chambers each roughly 2.5 metres long, two galleries separated by a gap of about a metre between the two backstones.

The four gaps between the entrance and segmenting jambstones are about the same width and each of the four chambers have four sidestones, two on each side, all pretty symmetrical, but no less satisfying for that. It’s in amazingly good condition, only now a tad overgrown, holly colonising the northern side and I’d say the whole thing might get inundated in summer. Some of the roofstones are laying about on the south-eastern flank of the tomb and there’s no sign of any corbelling – which begs the question: if the distance from the floor to the top of the chamber sidestones is never much over 1.5 metres, were the tombs built by small people, or very large cats?

We mucked about here for quite a while in the watery winter sunshine, our first stop on a quick gallop around South Tyrone and we were enchanted, glad to be back out exploring, discovering, snooping and wondering. It was a great place to start at and is definitely worth a visit, only let’s hope that now things are recovering that the DOE tend to the plants that are in danger of taking over the place.

A rival for the more widely known Ardristan, it’s in a relatively isolated spot on the road to nowhere special. You could take it in after a visit to Haroldstwon, 2.5 kilometres to the south-west. It’s not visible from the small road but I accessed it from the west, having fortuitously met the owner who was relaxed about me jumping the gate and having a look.

The base of the stone is quite stout, tapering up to over 2 metres tall and with six grooves. All of the views around the stone are blocked by trees and shrubs so it’s hard to tell if there’s any alignment. Williamstown fits neatly into the group of North Carlow grooved stones.

Late evening on the first day of the year and after two disappointments earlier I pulled the car over in the cul-de-sac on the southern flank of Croghan mountain. Twenty metres into the field is this weird looking stone, about 1.4 metres tall and one of those that looks different from every angle. One side of it is incredibly phallic and looks like it has been split vertically down the middle. It’s well embedded into the ground but not marked on the OS map and I only found it from scouting the SMR at archaeology.ie – I had a sense that this may be modern and erected as a cattle scratching post.

It was an overcast day and I had just scouted around the western reaches of Tomduff Hill in a second vain attempt to find some elusive sites in Killoughternane. I’d earlier also failed to find a stone at Kilbrannish North (I think it’s been removed). Passing over the spectacular road south of Croaghaun towards the pass between Mount Leinster and Slievebawn, I reached the car park at The Nine Stones (S817546) and kept going, assured that the cloud threatening to drop and obscure the summit would hold off.

Disappointed at Killoughternane, I headed back around north-east towards the pass only to see the cloud kissing the aerial and dancing about the summit of Mt. Leinster. The Nine Stone car-park is at around the 400 metre contour, the cairn at 795 about 2 kilometres up the service road, so a one-in-five height gain. Not much but it’s getting late and I’d prefer not to be driving home in the dark and the views will be obscured by the time I get to the top. Hmmmmm… I was tempted to drive, but I don’t think that’s allowed.

So off I set, unfit Andy on another venture that you’d probably pass up if you were thinking properly. Some of it is one-in-ten and some of it is one-in-three and the higher you get the steeper the pain, but don’t give up the game until… And that cloud kept dropping and the wind was whipping up, but those views on the way up: north-east over Bunclody towards the southern Wicklow outliers and almost to the sea off Arklow; it’s not too long before you’re looking down on Slievebawn (520m) with its cairn to the north-west; south-west down towards the mountains of Waterford and Tipperary and Slievenamon; and up and up.

Into the cloud with the wind whipping around the massive mast. The cairn is better than I expected, hollowed out in the centre but with some probable/possible orthostatic stones lying thrown about the place. The note in the inventory reckons that the trig builders were probably responsible for the damage. A lot of the cairn stones are larger than in a lot of other similar sites. They could be the remains of a kerb thrown up onto the pile and the footprint of the cairn extends well beyond this pile and is grass-covered further out. There are a few stones that look like the possible roofstones of a chamber or maybe a passage on the southern arc of the cairn.

I can only imagine what the all round views are like from up here, it being the highest spot for miles. Blackstairs mountain (735m) is six-and-a-half kilometres south of here across the Sculloge Gap but there was no sighting it for me on this day. The return jog back down to the car was pleasant, the sun was sinking and the day was done. Google maps said 80 minutes back to my place.

From the signpost that is used for shotgun target practice all the way to the monument is supposed to be 700 yards, but there’s two additional provisos: follow the posts (many of which are now fallen) and wear good boots. The tomb is on a prominence and the whole of the approach, except for the first hundred yards or so, is boggy. This was the last site of a hectic day, begun at Dun Ruadh, a cairn with a stone circle at its centre, and ending here at Clogherny, a wedge tomb surrounded by a stone circle.

Clogherny, or Meenerrigal, is wild: those 700 yards could be 700 miles. There’s nothing up here but the views, and the tomb, once you get here – no one, no sheep, maybe a hare or two or a deer now and then, and two hare-brained wanderers. This is the real deal. There’s a bit of a track that heads south-west from the signpost where we left the car but it soon runs out as it bends around to the west. There are still some odd posts off in the distance but following them means traversing the bog. There’s no other option.

The last rise before reaching the plateau that contains the monument is a slight slog and then the ground partially dries out (but I’m here in late summer so…). On first sighting it’s immediately apparent that the tomb builders didn’t pick the highest ground around – there’s a couple of higher knolls 300 metres to the south-west. The tomb is not quite aligned onto them, but the place is magnificent, oozing deliberation and reverence.

Anthony Weir says: “the whole monument seems to combine the practices of court tomb, wedge tomb and stone circle building.” Estyn Evans says more or less the same. Davies, the excavator in 1937, says that given its peculiarities “… the monument was conceived as two-chambered, though in so degenerate a form that it is difficult to describe it as anything but a megalithic cist.” A simpler analysis might conclude ‘a classic wedge tomb with a large, uncovered ante-chamber’, surrounded by a stone circle.

It’s thought that the tomb had been messed about with well before being rediscovered by the removal of the peat and possibly happened before the beginning of the growth of the bog, so presumably in the bronze age. The southern, front end is fascinating, with that large ante-chamber and the jambstones looking very cist-like, yet, was it ever covered? And if it had been covered, could it have been the circle builders, presumably later on, that uncovered it?

The addition of the circle, paved with cobbles between the orthostats (not now visible due to plant growth) adds to the dreamlike quality of the site. I couldn’t help but notice the similar ‘feel’ that the place had to that at Dún Ruadh. Maybe I’m getting older and mellower. The western end of the Sperrins with Mullaghcarbatagh and Mullaghclogher three kilometres to the east, dominate the skyline there, but scarcely impact the place. The two rocky knolls to the south are more viable as loci.

The now mud-filled chamber is low and squat. The longer of the two eastern sidestones is falling outwards. Davies says that one western sidestone had fallen inwards and that it had to be reset. The roofstone seems relatively stable, resting on at least four of the stones, including the backstone. It’s almost square except in the north-eastern corner which has a curve taken out of it, almost certainly deliberately. This reminded me of the notch-like feature found in many wedge-tomb backstones.

I could have stayed up here forever. The magic of the circle, even now in its overgrown state, surrounding quite a fantastic tomb and cairn, stay long in the memory. It’s the type of place that empties the spirit of anxieties, lush with wildflowers in early September, the sphagnum moss in abeyance for a short while. Sign-posted, Clogherny Meenerrigal is a must-see site, but do take note of the advice.

In Burl’s A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland & Brittany, Castledamph is rated (3), Ruined but recognisable – to which I would add: barely. Another site, like at Beaghmore, ‘discovered’ when 2 metres of peat were removed, this time in the late nineteenth century, the excavation report of 1937 and Burl’s book tell of two contiguous rings, 2 concentric rings with a cairn, two alignments, another cairn and possibly two more concentric circles.

I set out off across a pasture field with some hope and anticipation. About 200 metres in the terrain changes to poorer land and I surmounted the fence into the large enclosure with the monuments. This is a relatively accessible area but has the feel of being isolated, sited on a southern spur of the Sperrins with the deep valley of the Glensass Burn to its west rising towards the north into a natural arena. The land is poor and the bog is growing again so it’s really difficult to make anything out now in late summer, rushes higher than even the tallest of stones.

The alignment is recognisable, as are the two contiguous rings, but as I said earlier, barely. I believe I saw some of the stones of the concentric rings but not in any pattern that displayed their form. The scenery is fantastic here and in my clomping exertions about the place my eyes kept getting pulled away, towards the arena-like bowl two kilometres north below Mullaghcarbatagh and west across the valley to Eden Hill and Craigacrom north of it. Castledamph is archaeologically frustrating but has its rewards.

Probably best visited between the months of November and March when there’s less plant growth to obscure it, this neat little dolmen retains quite a bit of its structure and is possibly quite a charmer. It’s sadly now trapped in a thorny hedge, locked between a country lane and a horrible barbed-wire topped fence. We drove right up to it and didn’t hang around in case the farmer needed access, disappointed at our inability to have a good root around.

Twenty metes or so east of the portal tomb is this almost completely destroyed tomb. The literature says wedge but I reckon it’s the remains of a two- or three-chambered court tomb, possibly aligned on the deep notch between Mullaghbane and Mullaghbolig at Barnes, south across the Glenelly Valley. The low remains straddle, and are incorporated into, a north-south field boundary, with many stones embedded into the turf, but definitely showing that they are chamber stones from a megalithic tomb and to me, on this day, more interesting than its more famous neighbour. A site that could do with a rescue excavation.

Interesting roadside site at the eastern end of the beautiful Glenelly Valley. A 9 stone north/south alignment, now corralled into a tight enclosure, with the info board peculiarly placed up in the top, north-western corner. The stones range from 2 metres to .2 of a metre tall with no satisfying single gradual height increase/decrease. That said, it is a delightful arrangement, impossible to not imagine that it was part of some greater complex. But why on such a steep hill?

It’s been fifteen weeks since my visit to An Bheitheach Mhór (Beitheach Mór), a second visit here in five months. Back in May the torrential rain forced us back to the car after a cursory 5 minutes. It was my mate Paulie’s first time there, my second and it was a complete washout. Now, this last time, it was overcast and we had the place to ourselves, bar the hippy couple making out in their van in the car-park.

I took no fieldnotes. So all I’ve got are memories, and photos. So what do I think of when I think of Beaghmore? Well it’s quite an intimidating prospect. Discussion of stone circles seems to focus on their purpose. In the three times I’ve visited the site I’ve not thought once of ceremony nor ritual. The immediate reaction, at least my own, is one of awe. Twice I’ve had people with me and they’ve been the same. And then, because there’s so much going on, perplexity.

So then when I return to the literature back at home I’m looking for an explanation, one that I don’t seek when I’m there. Which is curious in a way, or not so much if you give it a bit more thought. Because Beaghmore is what it is before you interpret it and all you can do is wander about, dazed and bedazzled and yes, perplexed, but so what?

I know it’s stating the obvious but there’s stones everywhere. In fact Beaghmore is the stoniest of all the stony places I’ve visited (maybe Maeve’s cairn has more stones but you know what I mean). Entering the site from the east it’s all very manicured – immediately inside the fence are two not quite conjoined circles with a small cairn in between. Four splayed alignments rush off to the north-east from either side of the cairn, meeting the boundary you’ve just entered and terminating in a small, cleared green area.

After this initial encounter, your mind, like a kid in a sweetshop, starts to get pulled around the place. Your eyes are drawn further in to the next two almost conjoined ‘circles’ and their not quite tangential alignments and then further still to Circle E whose interior is described by Burl as containing ‘a wilderness of sharpened stones like a fakir’s bed.’ There are many tall stones here in another mad alignment, like the rest of them at Beaghmore seemingly reaching towards the north-east beseechingly.

South of these, and almost separate from them, are two more stone circles and an intriguing barrow-like earthen ring with a cairn at its centre. This cairn, like the other 9 or so at Beaghmore, is small. An alignment here, close to the western stone circle but not quite touching it, heads off in… you guessed it, a north-easterly direction, back towards the ‘main’ part of the complex. Everyone who comments seems to be assured that there’s more to be discovered under the peat in the surrounding fields and I can’t say I disagree.

Whatever its purpose, or ‘meaning’ if you like, Beaghmore is a stone-lovers wonderland, a possible portal into the soul of bronze-age man/woman, if that is what floats your boat. Either way it’s downright trippy, spaced-out and weird in its own right without the need for plant or chemical inducements (though again, whatever floats your boat).

Ballybriest wedge tomb, the baby brother (sister?) of the better known and more easily accessible court tomb 120 metres or so to its north, is, to my mind, the best of the tombs in the townland. Another wedge tomb once stood 500 metres north-west of here, and now resides, reconstructed, in An Creggan Visitors Centre about 15 kilometres to the south-west in neighbouring Tyrone. Yet another possible wedge tomb once stood the same distance away but closer to the north and has now been destroyed by quarrying. There are also reports of 4 stone circles, various alignments and various cairns, making Ballybriest a rich prehistoric landscape.

All of these monuments were pre-bog constructions. The landscape now is pretty grim – partly-reclaimed pasture on the higher ground, boggy, rushy, swamp lower down, a massive quarry to the east, subsistence supplemented with industrial. The last time I was here up at the court tomb the weather was not untypically bleak, drenching us after 10 minutes, making for a hasty retreat to the car, giving up on attempting the wedge. Today, though overcast, is different – late summer temperate and easygoing.

Like over at nearby Tullybrick the tomb is low and squat, not quite a metre tall. Unlike Tullybrick, most of the chamber is still in situ. Two large roofstones cover a chamber made from large, laterally placed sidestones. A backstone, hidden by undergrowth, seals the rear of the tomb but doesn’t quite reach the covering roofstone, allowing those interested a gawk along the chamber out of the south-west facing entrance.

The entrance has the remains of a facade or maybe even an ante-chamber, two portal-like stones of which are the tallest of the whole construction. This is a really cool wedge tomb, much more satisfying than the court tomb on the prow of the hill to the north, which is no small compliment given how good that is in itself.

You could almost get bogged down in Beaghmore, 8 kilometres south-west of here – but you couldn’t really because it’s been reclaimed from the bog. I metaphorically did, in the swamp of the mind that stopped me in my tracks as I toured backwards, writing forwards four months ago.

From the circles we crossed the Tyrone/Derry border heading east and north-east through Davagh forest, emerging into heathland and then down into the Moyola River valley. A road leads south-east up out of The Six Towns, wooded for a while then opening out into more patchy, reclaimed terrain. After a kilometre and a half there’s an east-leading concreted track, halfway along which is our target.

We could see the tomb from this track and, after parking in a lay-by, headed north across two empty pasturage fields before reaching the unreclaimed bog. A short hop, skip and jump or so and there it is. Set within quite an amount of cairn is a small, classic, south-west/north-east aligned wedge tomb.

We approached from the east where a large, broken roofstone covers the rear of the tomb – the backstone on which it probably once also rested is now missing. This roofstone is the most prominent feature of the remains, with some southern kerbing and some of the facade at the south-west also fairly visible. The ante-chamber and chamber combined are about 5 metres long and pretty much filled in except under the roofstone.

Again there is much reclamation work in the area. Blanket bog seems to just get stripped away and, unlike in the vast midlands peat-works, doesn’t seem to serve any purpose other than to get down to the old ground which is then used for grazing. So far Tullybrick has survived these depredations, unlike some of the archaeological remains one-and-a-half kilometres south-west in Ballybriest.

There are supposed to be the relatively substantial remains of a wedge tomb here but you would never tell if you just happened by. Indeed, all that can be seen is an overgrown mound with a few stones here and there. I can well understand AR Cane’s perplexity, but I can confirm that yes, you were in the right place. The fallen tree has been removed and maybe there might be a move afoot to clean up the site as there seems to be a lot of work in this part of Davagh forest.

Sheet 13 of the OS Discoverer Series contains such an amount of megalithic treats that it would take an age to get to and see them all. And then when you’d completed that, you could start on the ones that are on the NISMR that aren’t marked on the paper map. The area between Omagh in the west and Cookstown in the east, north and south of the connecting A505, has to be one of, if not the richest areas in all Ireland. Possibly Parknabinnia in the Clare Burren comes close, but that’s mainly wedge tombs, whereas here it’s court, portal, wedge tombs, cairns, stone circles, rows and standing stones. And these are the ones we know of – what lies beneath the peat in the parts of mid-Tyrone that haven’t been explored yet?

Keerin portal tomb, or dolmen if you prefer, hints at the possibilities, as does, obviously, Beaghmore, but we’ll save that for later. In the meantime there’s this. In the middle of a bog, where reclamation work is continuing west of the road from here in Broughderg, is a little flooded gem. We parked at the entrance to the little shebeen/club with the Palestinian flag flying and headed through the kissing gate. 250 metres south-east of here are the roadside remains of a court tomb that we’d visited a few months back. We’d bypassed this in our rush to reach Derry, put off by the experience at the ruined court tomb where the bog has pretty much inundated what’s left. That was a mistake.

The tomb is not visible from the road 120 metres into the bog. The terrain is all rushes and heather above the peat. There is a vague path from the kissing gate but you need to be well into the field before you catch a glimpse of the capstone. From what what we could make out this is a near-perfect example of a small portal tomb. The literature doesn’t mention a doorstone and there are doubts about whether there is a backstone, neither of which we could check. The chamber is flooded, an oily soup gently swirling, quietly tempting further exploration which we declined. The capstone is at ground level at the rear, rising to about half a metre at the front where it has a handsome flattened face. The two portals are well-matched, as are the sidestones.

We tamped down the surrounding rushes in a bid to see a bit more of the monument but I felt like I was being a bit too intrusive. Large flakes of the capstone are falling into the gloop in the chamber and it seems that the stones are more fragile than at first glance. Judging by all the activity in the vicinity, it’s not hard to imagine that this whole area might also be one day ‘reclaimed’, maybe revealing Keerin in all its glory, but you would have to hope that any such work would be done by the proper professionals.

About 120 metres east of Dun Ruadh is this heavily leaning standing stone. It looks to be in quite a precarious situation but is said to be 1.7 metres tall. It may be part of a ruined something or other but that’s just pure speculation. It seemed to us that, along with Dun Ruadh and the chambered tomb west of it, Crouck and Crockneyneill Hill has much more to offer the megalithic explorer, but today we had other, bigger fish to fry.

Sometimes when we head out we aim big from the get go. We’d been in Tyrone and Derry a few times this year and there was a seriously glaring omission. Ten or so years ago I’d made a fairly feeble attempt at Dun Ruadh and had been thinking about it since, kind of saving it for some sort of epiphanic occasion from deep within my imagination.

We parked at the old, abandoned schoolhouse at the bottom of the farm lane. Turns out this was built ‘of stones looted from the cairn’ in 1877. There was, what we thought to be, a dead sheep lying in the small courtyard at the front of the building. Creepy. We headed up to the farmhouse and knocked looking for permission. Nothing doing, no-one in, except the dogs in the yard. Well, here we are, and Dun Ruadh is just up there, a couple of gates and fences away. So here we go, spending some time at the small chamber on the way.

The territory is reclaimed farmland, sheep and some cattle. Estyn Evans, writing in 1966, says that the cairn “reaches a maximum height of 7 ft. and it is unlikely to have been much higher because at this point it is capped by a small patch of peat which presumably covered the entire site before the cairn was plundered.” And plundered and plundered and excavated or, again Evans, “much mutilated”… to the point where you wonder what the point is.

So first off, let me say I loved Dun Ruadh. It truly is special. But, and I didn’t want there to be a but, but there is… gorse is colonising the whole south-western paved area and ‘entrance’, hugely detracting from the impact of the place, eating into the inner ‘courtyard’, gobbling up the space and crowding out the vibe. Which is not to say that there’s no vibe there at all.

The ancient rubble of the horseshoe cairn retains such a huge amount of rustic magic as to obliterate my cynicism. Some of the excavated cists are visible in the cairn and the whole place has an air of quiet mystery. There’s no activity on the expanse of the hillside save a very few sheep and the atmosphere of the place seems to be funnelled through the monument. The orthostats of the ring, though gradually being encroached on by the gorse, blankly stare into the inner space, silently ceremonial, transporting us willingly to a lost time of mystery and wonder.

There is the possibility that such an important site as Dun Ruadh could be taken into state care, like at Beaghmore six kilometres to the east, where the manicured intrusiveness hardly detracts from the magic of the place, but in the end I know I’d hate that, all perfect fences, no doubt tight up to the stones, and explanatory noticeboards and the rugged ruin-ness all tidied up. Which is not to say that a half an hour and a bushman wouldn’t improve matters. Arriving back at the car, the ‘dead’ sheep was back on its feet, corralled temporarily at the schoolhouse, giving us a lesson in lightheartedness.

Four hundred metres north-east of Lemnagh Beg, the middle of the three related White Park Bay passage tombs, this is a survivor, visible from the road below, hanging on in there on the lip of a quarry. The landowner is a brother of the landowner at Lemnagh Beg and he duly granted us permission for a look.

A track rises up from the western end of the farmyard. The chamber can be seen from this approach. It’s small and squat and one of the three uprights keeping the capstone in place is almost collapsing into the quarry, seemingly held there by the continued downward pressure. Photographing the monument from this open-sided end of the tomb proved to be hair-raising, maybe not the most advisable action.

Clegnagh is placed lower down than both Lemnagh Beg and Magheraboy, but still the views are fantastic. The area around the monument is generally unkempt and some large boulders to the south are said to be remnants of a kerb, though it’s all pretty haphazard. All in all it’s not a place I’d highly recommend, unless like us you had to see all three.

The furthest west of the three and the second one we visited. Pulled in at the farmhouse and asked for permission to proceed which was promptly granted. Bring wellies, or other waterproof footwear – there is a lot of mud. The farmer pointed out the location to us, high to the west of his yard on a prominent knoll. The land rises to the south behind the tomb and falls steeply north beyond and towards White Park Bay.

Fourwinds reckons this is the best preserved of the three but that’s difficult to gauge in its current overgrown, unloved state. The capstone arcs over the chamber east to west but seems to be falling away to the north. It’s hard to check because of all the growth. There is evidence of some kerbstones in amongst all the gorse at the north side of the monument but overall this was a frustrating visit, any possibility of figuring out the remains of a passage or even the chamber entrance lost under nasty herbage.

We approached this from the south because we just don’t listen, another needless half hour toil because we’ll never learn. But that’s nearly half the pleasure, traipsing amidst the gorgeous wild mint in the summery half-bog on the northern slopes of Lannimore Hill, frustrated but determined because when you know what’s on offer you’re never giving up. Footwear counts around here, even in the dry season.

Though it’s on the highest bit of ground for a couple of hundred metres all around it, gorse keeps it hidden from the west, where we were, mainly… until we weren’t. Because eventually we spied it, peeping up almost furtively about 300 metres away, way over there, the three guides we might have followed: tjj, minipixel and Fourwinds ignored because we’re idiots – or at least I am because my companion mainly relies on me knowing what I’m doing.

Such an elegant sculpture, denuded of its cairn, left for us to marvel at in a marvellous location. One of three, it’s sisters are at Clegnagh and Lemnagh Beg a kilometre and a kilometre-and-a-bit to the west. This is the best of the three, a bit of space and a smidge of care (maybe by default) and some fame ensuring it can keep its best face forward. The capstone hangs delicately over the sunken, flooded chamber floor, balanced elegantly with its prow at the north, reaching for the infinite out over White Park Bay.

There are signs of the kerb at the north, an arc of four boulders, and also at the south-west, but covered by the dreaded gorse these days. Small complaint though as the chamber charms any resentment away.