stone circles ireland

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.

...

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 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...

This Drumskinny complex may have been built in the second millennium B.C., but the letters MOF on some of the stones are not an indication of the existence of writing at the time, but the initials of the Ministry of Finance which supplied them in places where the excavator found evidence for the former presence of stones which have disappeared....

Beautifully situated overlooking Broad Haven, this stone circle consists of an outer ring of 33 stones with a diameter of 54 feet and an inner ring of 16 stones with a diameter of about 30 feet. One part of the circle may have been adapted or other uses later....

Hugh stones of a Neolithic passage tomb inscribed with fascinating designs of early art. Superb view....

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...

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...

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...

In the parish of Abbeylara there are two well preserved remains of stone circles. There are also in this area surviving traces of what appear to be megalithic burials. There is no doubt of the antiquity of these stone circles and of their importance as archaelogical remains of the Bronze Age period of our history. They stand as memorials to those who recognised the sun as the centre of the universe, the source of all life....