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REANASCREENA County Cork

Heavily overgrown and hauntingly esoteric, especially at dusk when the last of the light slants across its lichened stones, this unusual stone circle lies 570 feet above sea level, 3 miles inland from Ross Carbery. Twelve evenly spaced uprights and an axial stone form a megalithic ring 30 feet in diameter, surrounded by a fosse and outer earth bank. The tallest stones are the matched portals on the east, directly facing the axial or recumbent stone at the opposite side of the circle.

Excavation of the site in the 1960s revealed that the ground in the vicinity of the portals had been heavily eroded, and later reinforced with a layer of small stones, indicating much human activity in this area and probably, in the opinion of the excavator, the result of frequent processions or dancing. Several pits, one containing fragments of cremated bone, were found within and outside the circle. At some stage peat began to accumulate over the floor of the circle and in the fosse, possibly in the first millennium BC when climate change accelerated bog growth.

Click here to buy the Appletree Press book from Amazon.co.uk. For more information click on: Ireland's Ancient Stones - A Megalithic Heritage by Kenneth McNally, published by Appletree Press.

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