When I visited Oughtihery (County Cork) I thought I was going to see this one. This five-stone stone circle is a reall beauty and quite difficult to spot from the road. The effort of finding it is well worth it though. The stones are all about 1.2m tall and the centre of the circle is filled with some field clearance or possibly cairn material from a nearby arrangement of stones that may have been a wedge tomb at one time.
The site is in a modern field system, but several things are clear here. The overlooking hill feels very important to the site and the circle, the aforementioned (possible tomb) and a whopping great standing stone 2 fields away ( Maulmore (County Cork)) form a line of monuments that must be inter-connected.
Despite the organised surroundings this is a very pleasant feeling site and very worth a visit.
This is an explanation of (and a bit of a disclaimer for) the coordinates I provide. Where a GPS figure is given this is the master for all other coordinates. According to my Garmin these are quite accurate. Where there is no GPS figure the 6 figure grid reference is master for the others. This may not be very accurate as it could have come from the OS maps and could have been read by eye. Consequently, all other cordinates are going to have inaccuracies. The calculation of Longitude and Latitude uses an algorithm that is not 100% accurate. The long/lat figures are used as a basis for calculating the UTM & ITM coordinates. Consequently, UTM & ITM coordinates are slightly out. UTM is a global coordinate system - Universal Transverse Mercator - that is at the core of the GPS system. ITM is the new coordinate system - Irish Transverse Mercator - that is more accurate and more GPS friendly than the Irish Grid Reference system. This will be used on the next generation of Irish OS maps. |