stone circles ireland

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...

Stone Circle: A stone circle, 100 feet in diameter, with an interior and exterior facing of stones with a bank in between. Some very large boulders are used in this circle, and some are lying down.
Motte: A motte surrounded by a ditch which is rounded at the southern side but squared at the north. Further to the south is a raised area, which may also have been used like a bailey for defensive purposes....

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...

An ambiguous group of Bronze Age ritual and funerary monuments, overlying traces of Neolithic occupation in an area of cutaway bog to the south of the Sperrin Mountains. Uncovered in stages since 1945, the structures comprise stone circles, tangential alignments and cairns, remarkable for their complexity and extent. It may safely be assumed that others await discovery beneath the all-pervading peat. As is usual in the Ulster Circles, the stones here are mostly of no great height, with the exc...

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...

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...

Located across the Glenealo river from St. Kevin's Kitchen, the Deer Stone is thought to be a baptismal font of great antiquity. When the wife of one of the monastery workmen died during childbirth in the seventh century, Kevin is said to have prayed here and a doe came daily and deposited a supply of milk into the hollow of the stone for the baby. According to legend the child later became a disciple of Kevin....

A set of four stone circles in three different townlands and three different fields near the road. These are located just off the R345 road.

Beware as three of these stones circles are located on private land.

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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...

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...