Megalithic Sites to visit on a trip to the Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland

Submitted by Andy B on Wednesday, 08 August 2018 Page Views: 6049

Neolithic and Bronze AgeCountry: Ireland (Northern) County: Co. Armagh
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**Lissanduff Earthworks** submitted by ladrin : Nice view towards wild Bushfoot beach. (Vote or comment on this photo)

The Giant’s Causeway needs no introduction of course as one of Ireland’s most famous landmarks. But you may not know that there are many wonderful megalithic and prehistoric sites within a few miles that are really worth visiting while you’re in the area. Here is a selection of some of the best. Follow the links for more details on each of these from our site database.

Worth a mention first due to its closeness to the Giant’s Causeway itself are the Lissanduff Earthworks, these consist of two giant pairs of concentric earthen rings with an enclosure. One is quite boggy but the other is quite dry in most weathers. They have a good information board, and are thought to date from the Iron Age. Our contributor Ladrin describes them as a “peaceful and mysterious place”.

Just down the coast to the east is Carnalridge standing stone, or The White Wife, a most impressive and doubt deeply symbolic stone, painted white as its name would suggest. For as long as anyone can remember it has had a small round stone on top - now cemented. This used to be unpainted so that it looked like a figure her head poking out of a white robe.

If you’d prefer to explore west along the coast as part of a Giant’s Causeway Tour, along in the village of Culfeightrin. you can find the two Culfeightrin Stones, in the graveyard of the church. One of them is almost 3m tall. The other one is 1.6m tall.

Further along the coast is the unusually shaped Stone of Sorrows, or Cloch na h-Uaighe. I say unusually shaped so that it looks very different from different angles, have a look at the photos on our main page for this site to see what I mean.

Close to here is Carnanmore, a circular hilltop-cairn offering splendid views and containing a good deal of quartz, quite a common feature of passage-tombs.

It surrounds a rectangular, corbel-roofed chamber, one of these has faint decoration in the style of passage-tomb art, including a snake-like line, 3 horseshoe shapes and two groups of concentric circles, one of which may be a spiral.

Heading south are two quite well known sites, Ballymacaldrack Court Tomb, and Craigs Lower Passage Grave which would make a good stop off on the way back to Antrim town or Belfast. There are many more sites to explore in County Antrim, see our page for more.

With thanks to Ptarmigan, Ladrin, Kai Hoffman and Allens Belfast Bus Tours for their contributions to this article.

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