We started out heading south to have a look around Waterford and Wexford, with a quick stop at Jerpoint Abbey on the way. There aren’t a lot of megaliths down there, but we saw some nice ones.
Harristown passage tomb
The Harristown passage tomb is in pretty bad condition, but the location was great: high on a hill, surrounded by the sea on three sides.
Knockeen dolmen
This one is memorable for its fantastic double capstone. It is now part of a hedgerow.
Kilbride church at Knockeen
The Knockeen dolmen was once part of the cemetary of a long-abandoned 18th-c. church. Now the Kilbride churchyard is covered with impenetrable undergrowth. It’s yet another example of how Christian churches were often built on an ancient pre-Christian sacred site.
Gaulstown dolmen
It’s always a surprise to bump into other people in these remote spots.
This one has been reinforced with concrete.
Matthewstown wedge tomb
On the top of a hill near a piggery, which we could smell.
Ballynageragh dolmen
My notes say we couldn’t get to it due to cows. We were able to see that it has been badly reconstructed, however.
Five Fingers
We returned to our favorite place in west Cork and stayed with our pal Noreen again. Not far from there, you drive right by these three standing stones on the main road from Skibbereen. There were originally five of these, but one has fallen and the other was moved to the Somerville home in Castletownsend. (Yes, Edith Somerville’s home, Drishane. See below.)
These stones are set deep into notches in the bedrock and look out over a very broad flat valley like sentinels. You can’t help wondering what they meant to the people who erected them.
Drishane dolmen
Edith Somerville and her friend Violet Martin (aka Martin Ross) were two local Edwardian ladies who wrote books together. They are best known for The Irish R.M., which was made into a BBC TV show in the 1980s. I’d seen Noreen’s books about them the year before and had become a big fan. I read all their books, but I was more fascinated by their lives; the story would make a terrific mini-series. The Somerville home, Drishane, was just across the road from Noreen’s B&B. I’d have loved to look around, but it’s a private home, so I didn’t feel comfortable hopping the fence. We did spot this beauty from the road and darted in to have a quick look.
We saw and did so many cool things on this trip, it’s tempting to tell you about them, but I’m determined to keep this focused on megaliths. But I’ll make some exceptions.
Noreen took us to a place called Castle Haven. It’s one of those places you’d never find by accident, a sheltered little cove off the beaten track. It was the site of the original church for Castletownsend, but at some point people wanted the church in town and built their new one there. So this lonely old church just sat empty.
One year a really bad storm destroyed that little harbor. It peeled open all the graves and threw around the old headstones. The church was left a ruin, the graveyard all topsy turvy — when we saw it, nature had taken over again. Little by little trees and greenery were covering it.
A quiet stream dribbles down the hill behind the church to run into the sea, and if you follow it up, you will find a mass rock. Hidden in the thick undergrowth, this flat rock served as an altar in the days when people had to hear mass in secret.
One more thing about Castle Haven: Noreen said a while back somebody pulled a cannon ball out of the hillside overlooking the little harbor. It was from a battle between the English and the Spanish. I just looked it up: it was from 1601.
Bohonaugh stone circle and dolmen
Hard to find, but so beautiful!
There was a small dolmen just outside the circle.
Reenascreena stone circle
This one also took forever to find. It was at the top of a hill, and yet the inside of the circle was boggy and wet. Where did the water come from? I suspect the stones in these circles are set into the underlying rock, which in this case formed a small bowl under the topsoil.
Knowth and Dowth
We carried on to Dingle and Clare again, did tons of fun stuff but didn’t see any new megaliths there. Upon returning to Dublin, we ventured up to the Boyne valley again to see the incredible progress they’d made in reconstructing the ancillary passage tombs at Knowth and Dowth.
Bear in mind, they’ve made every effort to return each and every stone to its original position wherever they can — it may look random but it’s not.
Knowth has a large central mound with a series of smaller mounds surrounding it. What was accessible at the time was in very good condition. I crawled inside one of the smaller ones and into the big one as far as I could. You could only get about 1/3 of the way into it.
Here you can see the part they had not yet started work on behind the finished front.
Click here to see pix of Knowth in 1990.
We then went to Dowth, where they had not yet started work. This is how it looked for hundreds of centuries: just a rocky hill covered with shrubs and small trees. Probably local people told stories about it.
You can see a few of the curbstones here. We climbed up to the top and Newgrange was plainly visible. See 1990 for more info about Newgrange. Click here.
Oh, and then we had a little car accident outside Slane, side-swiping two brothers from Tipperary transporting a huge pane of glass (which didn’t break!) and a guy who was late for Mass. Carole was attempting to “overtake” on a curve and it was one of those moments where you just brace yourself and hope for the best. Nobody was hurt, everybody behaved well (the two brothers were lovely, really), damage was minor, all vehicles drivable. But holy cow! Could I ever come to Ireland and not risk my life?
And so ended another memorable trip!
Click here to see pix from 1993.