Drombeg, County Cork

This much publicised monument, ‘The Druid’s Ring’, is one of the more accessible stone circles in the area, reached by a signed path 11/2 miles east of Glandore. Its siting on a hillside plateau with views across small cultivated fields to the coast beyond is very beautiful. The circle has a diameter of 30 feet with an axis running north-east/south-west, providing an alignment on the mid-winter sunset. Its thirteen surviving stones – there were seventeen originally – are rather more closely set than in other West Cork circles.

Several are truly megalithic, over 6 feet high, and some have smooth sloping tops, either artificially shaped or chosen for their appearance. The recumbent or axial stone is a long horizontal boulder with a flat upper surface bearing two cup-marks. At the centre of the circle excavators found an urn containing the cremated remains of a youth. Radio-carbon dating established that it was an early Iron Age burial of perhaps around 100 BC, which would be unusually late for the erection of a stone circle, indicating a reuse of the monument at a much later date. Later still are the remains of domestic huts and an open-air cooking pit known as a Fulacht Fiadh, a short distance to the west of the circle.