Cairn, Lounaghan, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Cairns

Cairn, Lounaghan, Co. Kerry

On a low knoll in the hill pasture of Lounaghan, a modest mound of stones sits so quietly beneath its cover of grass and peat that it could easily be mistaken for a natural rise in the ground.

It is not. The mound is a cairn, a deliberate accumulation of stones that in Irish prehistoric tradition typically marked a burial or served as a territorial or ceremonial monument. This one measures roughly 3.45 metres east to west and just under 3 metres north to south, rising only about 40 centimetres above the surrounding ground. Placed on top of it is a single large stone, nearly a metre long and half a metre high, which sits with an air of intention rather than accident.

The cairn lies to the north of a tributary of the Glashievhee stream, in a landscape that has quietly been receding from human use for centuries. What makes the wider setting particularly striking is the presence of relict field walls protruding through the bog nearby. These are the remnants of an organised agricultural landscape, field boundaries that were once in active use before the bog gradually crept over them and preserved them in place. Taken together, the cairn and the submerged field system suggest a stretch of ground that was once far more intensively settled and worked than its current rough pasture appearance would imply. The bog, in effect, has been acting as an inadvertent archive, holding the bones of an older countryside just below the surface.

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Pete F
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