Compared with the surrounding rushy fields that were hard-won from upland bog, the enclosure’s grass is a well-trimmed lawn. Gravel beds, added in the 1960s, complete the impression that Drumskinny stone circle, cairn and alignment might be an eccentric garden feature.
However, the monument is one of the plethora of megalithic structures that began to emerge across Ireland during the neolithic period (from about 6,000 years ago). After the land’s widespread deforestation, a highly organised agrarian society became established. These people built massive edifices, including the famous tomb at Newgrange in County Meath, which was the resting place of a ruling elite. A glimmer of their rituals and spirituality is still visible through the passage that snares the light of rising sun at winter solstice.
That society’s demise is marked by more modest monuments. Like this one. The tallest stone of Drumskinny’s circle reaches only to my nose, while those in the adjacent row are mostly below knee height. With its kerbed finish and sod roof, the cairn resembles a miniature Newgrange, but the site’s excavation revealed no evidence of human burial.
Which begs the question: what were these stones for? Clues lie in the fact that Drumskinny’s line and circle are part of a network that weaves through the northern counties to the arrangement at Beaghmore in County Tyrone. Pottery fragments have dated some of that network to the neolithic – or may simply show that such sites were occupied across the ages.
Analyses of pollen from sediments of bog hint that others were erected during the bronze age (from about 4,000 years ago), when the climate was wetter and forest had grown back. At Beaghmore, a number seem oriented to solar events. Perhaps these reflect the desperation of a people pleading for the sun to rekindle the soil’s fertility?
I plonk myself down on the cairn and point my mobile. The phone’s compass confirms the perfect north-south alignment of the stone row. Running my hand over the grass, my fingers touch gravel chippings. Someone has arranged them into a smiley face.
As I leave, I look towards the setting sun. Along an axis perpendicular to the alignment, it is a patch of white glare behind a thick bank of cloud.
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