Cairn, Termon, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Cairns

Cairn, Termon, Co. Clare

On the Termon plateau in County Clare, a modest heap of stones sits on a south-facing slope near the summit, easy to walk past and easier still to mistake for a field clearance.

It is, in fact, a cairn, a deliberate prehistoric monument built from gathered stone, measuring roughly 3.75 metres north to south and 3 metres east to west. Cairns of this kind were typically raised as funerary or ceremonial markers, their placement on elevated ground likely chosen for reasons of visibility, ritual, or both.

What gives this particular cairn its quiet interest is its setting. It sits within an ancient field system that spreads across the whole of the Termon plateau, suggesting that the landscape here was once organised, worked, and inhabited in ways that have largely been erased from view. The cairn is not isolated; a second example lies approximately 100 metres to the north-west, and the two together hint at a more deliberate arrangement across the plateau than either one would suggest alone. Keegan, writing in 2016, documented the dimensions and noted the cairn's position on that gentle southward slope, situating it within what is clearly a layered prehistoric landscape rather than a scattering of unrelated features.

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Pete F
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