stone circles ireland

A fine stone circle on a hill-top with a commanding view. It is still composed of 60 stones, though originally there were many more. There is one stone standing outside the circle....

Arrestingly sited on a ridge where it commands the attention of travellers on the road south-east of Waterville, this is one of the more accessible alignments in a county which affords several fine examples.

Its four monumental stones, up to 10 feet in height, extend east to west for 30 feet. This appears to have been part of a more complex structure. There are traces of an enclosure, or possibly the base of a cairn, on the south side, as well as what looks like remnants of a megali...

Four miles south of Belfast in the townland of Ballynahatty, on a plateau overlooking the River Lagan, is the largest prehistoric ritual enclosure in Ireland. A circular earthwork up to 12 feet high surrounds an open space nearly 600 feet in diameter and some 7 acres in area. Five 'entrance' gaps, not all of which are presumed to be original, give access to the interior of the ring, and a few lone trees break the skyline along the rim of the bank. The ground inside the enclosure is somewhat h...

A much mutilated but nonetheless impressive monument - one of only two stone circles recorded from Co. Donegal - situated on bleak Mass hill in the townland of Glack-Na-Drumman, a little over a mile from Culdaff village. Its ruinous state is largely the result of land clearance in the nineteenth century, when a number of its stones were overthrown and buried on the site. Either the operation proved unexpectedly troublesome, or superstition gained the upper hand, for the work was abandoned, lea...

Seven of the eight Ogham stones in this group were discovered in a souterrain at Coolmagort in the nineteenth century and have been set up on this site close to Dunloe Castle. The tallest stone is 8 feet high. There is also a prostrate slab taken from the grounds of nearby Kilbonane church.

Ogham stones were frequently used as lintels in the construction of underground passages. Because of their long protection from exposure, the Dunloe inscriptions are unusually well preserved. A...

A large axial-stone circle, recently restored, standing on a breezy hill-top within a mile of the coast. Of its original thirteen stones nine remain; three of these were re-erected during excavation of the site in 1959.

The diameter of the ring is slightly less than 30 feet and the axis runs east to west through the radially set portal stones to the 'recumbent' or axial stone, resulting in an approximate alignment on the equinoctial sunset.
Several of the orthostats on the east sid...

This is the best of a number of stone circles in Co. Cork. There are 17 standing stones, the westernmost one of which lies flat.
A cremated body was found in the centre of the circle when it was excavated. The circle is dated to somewhere between 153 B.C. and A.D. 127. Sixty yards to the west of the stone circle are two round huts joined together.

The eastern part of the east hut contained a roasting oven. A stone causeway led from the juts to a cooking-place containing a heart...

A hauntingly esoteric site on a wooded hill in Furness estate, 3 miles east-north-east of Naas and 1 mile south-east of Johnstown. Though usually described as a rath, this is more properly interpreted as a ritual enclosure in the henge tradition. It consists of a circular earthwork nearly 200 feet in diameter, on top of and inside which are a number of mature hawthorn and ash trees. The bank, up to 9 feet high and cut by gaps on the east and west, is encircled by a fosse dug to a depth of 5 f...

Situated at a height of 570 feet above sea level and 3 miles inland from Ross Carbery, rush-stifled Reanascreena is a little known megalithic ring of twelve uprights and an axial stone. It is surrounded by a 12-feet wide fosse with an external earthen bank, a rare feature which suggests close cultural links with the henge monuments. A comparable but smaller embanked stone circle is at Glentane East in the same country.

When the Reanascreena site was scientifically examined in the...

Regarded as the exemplar of the West Cork stone circles, Drombeg, alias 'The Druid's Ring,' is a well preserved, clearly signposted and frequently visited monument. Its diameter of 30 feet is typical of several stone circles in the Ross Carbery district, all situated within a few miles of the coast.

The circle is of the so-called recumbent type, with an axis running north-east to south-west, as with many of these monuments, providing an alignment on the mid-winter sunset. Of its seven...