Clogheracaun, Crohan, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Cairns

Clogheracaun, Crohan, Co. Tipperary

On the eastern shoulder of Crohan hill in the Knockmealdown Mountains, a large circular cairn sits on level ground, quietly going about the business of being ancient.

A cairn, in the Irish prehistoric context, is a mound of stones, often covering a burial or marking a significant point in the landscape, and this one is substantial: roughly 17.3 metres north to south, 17.5 metres east to west, and rising to a maximum height of just over two metres. What makes it quietly peculiar is the outer ring of stones that appears to define and delimit the mound itself, with irregular heaps of medium-sized boulders scattered within. It has the feel of something that was once carefully arranged, even if time and the elements have done their best to obscure the original intention.

The cairn carries the place name Clogheracaun, and it occupies a position that feels both exposed and deliberate, set on a shoulder of the hill rather than at its summit. Coniferous plantation closes in from the south, west, and north, at distances ranging from roughly 100 metres to 250 metres, lending the site a slightly enclosed quality despite the openness of the ground it stands on. Low heather surrounds the base and is slowly encroaching further, softening the edges of the stonework in the way that vegetation tends to do with structures left to their own devices over a very long time. The boulders within show no obvious order now, though the delimiting ring suggests that some ordering principle once governed the whole.

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Pete F
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