LOUGHCREW CAIRNS

The Loughcrew cairns lie on a ridge which consist of four hills three of them are called Sliabh na Cailli the fourth one is called Patrickstown, megaliths is the general term used for these ancient stone monuments.

There are 32 cairns recorded on the four hills, although about 25 are all that can be easily noticed today. A cairn is a mound of stones, underneath these cairns are passage tombs. In most of these tombs remains of cremated human remains were found and this is common with most passage tombs, the cairns vary in size from about 7 meters to 50 meters in diameter. They are all named after letters of the alphabet, cairn A being the most westerly to X and Y on the eastern hill of Patrickstown.

Cairn T with Cairn S in the foreground

Cairn D is the largest although there was no tomb discovered in it, cairn T and L are the most spectacular, the inside of each are decorated with inscribed art in the stones. There are small amounts of art in most of the other tombs .These stone monuments date from Neolithic times and are about 5,000 years old. The Neolithic people were organised farmers and grew crops of wheat, oats and barley, they also had livestock.

Most of the Loughcrew cairns are on two peaks, called Cairnbawn east and Cairnbawn west which means white mound, this is because they were once covered with white quartz which is believed to have come from Wicklow Mountains. The passage of this stone was most likely up the Irish Sea and then proceeded up the river Boyne and Blackwater. The rest of the stones were mainly found on the local landscape which were deposited during the last ice age, known as ‘glacial erratics’.

On the mornings of the equinox of March and September the sun rises in the east and shines into the tomb (cairn T) at dawn, which lasts for almost an hour, and illuminates the art on the back stone of the centre cell.

As stated they are called Sliabh na Cailli which means the Hills of the Witch and there is legend of the witch jumping from hill to hill with aprons of stones trying to get to the fourth hill called Patrickstown but she fell and broke her neck on her final leap, so as legend tells us we were saved from the pagan queen. The stones she lost from her apron formed the cairns. There is a unique feature on the northern side of Cairn T called the ‘hags chair’, this large stone is in the shape of a throne and it is believed to be where she sat and ruled over her people. It is also tradition to make a wish at this stone and then walk around the mound in a clockwise direction.

There are spectacular views from these hills, 18 counties can be seen, such as Cooley mountains, Mourne mountains and Slieve Gullion to the north east; Slane and Drogheda to the east; Dublin, Wicklow mountains to the south east; Sliabh Bloom mountains to the south; Mountains in Leitrim, Roscommon and Sligo to the west.

Click on the link below to have a local guide show you the Cairns