Annaghmare : Court Tomb
Visit Notes
Sunday, 16th June 2002
This truly is a splendid place! The walk through the woods along the tarmac track is a delight and rounding the corner to see the court of this marvelous tomb facing you is a special moment indeed.
This site was excavated and restored, but in a very tasteful way. The surrounding fence is far enough away from the tomb and cairn to cause no distraction and the clearing it sits in is easily large enough.
A lot of the cairn remains to a height of 1.8m, surrounding the main chamber and subsidary chambers, of which there are two. The main chamber is split into three sections by jambs. The chambers are 3m, 3m & 2m long (starting with front chamber) and 1.5m wide. The two subsidary chambers are around 2m deep by 1.5m wide.
The main feature here though is the court. This is skewed slightly from the line of the main chamber. It is about 6m wide by 6m deep. In between the large stones that form the court (the tallest of these is 1.9m high and typically pointed) there is dry stone walling. As Anthony Weir commented along time before Stoneage Soundtracks was written, this would have made an excellent sounding board for ritual purposes. In fact as I waited here for Anthony to arrive I sat in the court next to the entrance to the chamber - from there all the surrounding noises were focused in on me, I could even hear Anthony's footsteps from over 200m away through the woods.
If you can come here on a nice day plan to stay and bring a picnic!
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Sunday, 5th February 2006
My stop here was an unscheduled one, but when I realised I was driving so close I had to take the detour. This is such a wonderful place that it would be hard to come here too often. Since my previous visit a new information board has been put up, which has a nice, but inaccurate, reconstruction drawing on it.
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Sunday, 7th May 2006
Back again so soon? Yep! I can't resist this place and the reconstructed court with the drystone walling looks superb. The quality of this site makes it a great one to use on an introductory tour of northern sites.
Like this monument
Marked Sites
Site Plans
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_Directions
From Crossmaglen head north on the B135 for 1km and turn left at the crossroads. This road bends around to the right and then the left. 500m after this lefthand bend you will come to a track on the right signposted to the tomb. You can drive half way along this and park. The walk from there is a very pleasant 300m.
Random Gazetteer
A Selection of Other Court Tombs
About Coordinates Displayed
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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. |
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