the kings stables

Reached by a small by-road leading to a car-park, the King's stables is a mysterious place which must have played some ritual role within the landscape around the great royal site of Navan Fort, one mile to the east. It is a dangerous and steep-sided 10-foot-deep man-made pool surrounded by a bank, constructed sometime before 1000 B.C. its significance must lie in its water, as the prehistoric Celts are known to have practised a water cult. A brief excavation in 1975 revealed the front of a human skull deliberately severed from the back part, perhaps related to another famous Celtic cult - that of the severed head. Other finds from the bottom of the pool included Late Bronze Age casting moulds of clay, but they shed little light on the mysteries associated with this eerie site now surrounded by wild cherry trees, and standing within sight of a Bronze Age fortification on a nearby hill-top known as Haughey's fort.