Cairn, Knocknarea, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Cairns

Cairn, Knocknarea, Co. Sligo

Most visitors who make the climb to the top of Knocknarea in County Sligo have one thing in mind: the enormous mound of Queen Maeve's Cairn, a passage tomb so large it dominates the entire summit.

What almost nobody notices is a second, far quieter cairn sitting roughly 90 metres to the south-east, close to the southern edge of the plateau, where the ground drops away sharply by about two metres to the east. It measures around eight metres across and barely 0.3 metres in height, grass-covered and easy to walk past without a second glance.

The structure is recorded as a cairn, the general term for a mound of stones accumulated over a burial or as a monument, though what this particular example originally looked like is no longer clear. What remains is a low, sod-covered spread of angular limestone with a central depression towards its northern side, giving it a roughly U-shaped outline when viewed from above. Whether that depression is an original feature of the monument's design or the result of later disturbance or collapse is uncertain. Stefan Bergh documented it in 1995, listing it among the cluster of prehistoric monuments that populate the Knocknarea summit plateau. It carries National Monument status, number 153, and is in state ownership, which places it under formal legal protection even if it sits in the shadow of its far more celebrated neighbour.

The summit of Knocknarea is reached by a well-worn path from the car park near Medb's well to the north, and the climb takes roughly forty-five minutes at a steady pace. Once on the plateau, the smaller cairn sits towards the southern rim, away from the main concentration of visitors gathered around Maeve's Cairn. It is easy to miss precisely because it looks, at first, like nothing more than a slight irregularity in the turf. That inconspicuousness is, in its own way, part of what makes it worth a moment's attention.

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Pete F
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