Loughcrew Cairns

The Loughcrew Cairns are a 5,000 year old passage tomb cemetery on the hills of County Meath, also known as Sliabh na Calliagh. Cairns crown the summits with carved chambers, wide views, and the famous equinox sunrise at Cairn T, making Loughcrew one of the most atmospheric prehistoric landscapes near the Boyne Valley.

Loughcrew Cairn T on Carnbane East.

Together with Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange, Knowth & Dowth) and the Sligo complexes (Carrowkeel & Carrowmore), Loughcrew forms one of Ireland's three great concentrations of passage tombs. Its chambers hold an exceptional wealth of carved stone and align with significant positions of the rising and setting sun, linking hilltop monuments, horizons, and the turning of the year.

The cairns are spread across three hills, Carnbane East, Carnbane West and Patrickstown. The Irish name for the site is Sliabh na Calliagh or Slieve na Caillaigh, often translated as the mountain of the hag or the Cailleach's hills. Local tradition says the monuments were made when the Cailleach leapt from hill to hill, dropping stones from her apron. If she completed a final leap, she would become mistress of all Ireland; instead she fell and was killed. The cairns themselves were built in the Neolithic, thousands of years before that story was written down, but the image of an elemental female figure carrying stone across the summits gives mythic form to the immense labor of building there.

Carved backstone inside Cairn T.

There are about twenty-three cairns in the Loughcrew complex. Cairn T is the centerpiece on Carnbane East and Cairn L is the centerpiece on Carnbane West. Nearby cairns engage with other parts of the seasonal cycle, suggesting that the whole cemetery may have worked as a network of places, horizons, and moments of light. The cairns on Carnbane East are accessible to the public, however the cairns on Carnbane West are on private land and the landowner prohibits access.

Equinox Alignment

The illumination of the passage and chamber at the winter solstice sunrise in Newgrange is world famous. Less well known is the equinox illumination at sunrise in Cairn T at Loughcrew. Around the equinoxes, rising sunlight travels along its passage and reaches a richly carved stone at the rear of the chamber. The beam is shaped by the entrance and passage stones and moves across the backstone, lighting circles, cup marks, radial designs, and other motifs. As the light shifts over the uneven surface, the art does not merely become visible; it changes from moment to moment.

Calling Cairn T simply an equinox tomb deserves some nuance. The dates and effects of illumination are shaped by the local horizon and the architecture of the passage. What matters is the deliberate encounter between chamber and sunrise during a significant part of the solar year. Looking outward from the rear of Cairn T, the Hill of Slane appears in the distant line of the passage. Whether that long view was intentionally selected remains open to question, but it shows how a hilltop chamber can pull distant landmarks into a single line of sight. At Loughcrew, scenery is not separate from the tombs. Distant hills, sunrise positions, and neighboring cairns help explain why the chambers were built where they were.

Equinox sunbeam illuminates the chamber of Loughcrew Cairn T.

More Recent Centuries

In more recent centuries Loughcrew became the seat of a branch of the Norman-Irish Plunkett family, whose most famous member became the martyred St Oliver Plunkett. The family church stands in the grounds of Loughcrew Gardens which is open the public. The Plunketts were dispossessed in the Cromwellian Settlement of 1652 when their estate at Loughcrew was assigned to the Naper Family who still farm the lands around Loughcrew.

Loughcrew Cairn S.

Loughcrew - A Powerful Place

Loughcrew Megalithic Cemetery is also known as Sliabh na Cailli or Slieve na Cailliagh - the Hill of the Hag, the Cairn of the Witch, the Mountain of the Sorceress, the Witches Hops - you get the idea.

Loughcrew, named after a local township, is one of the four largest megalithic cemeteries in Ireland. More than thirty chambered cairns, many with interior stone carvings, are spread over a ridge of three hills - along with a variety of monuments, including stone circles, henges, standing stones, Iron Age forts, and the remains of a cursus (a ceremonial entrance way).

The cairns are contemporary with Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth), having been constructed between 3500 and 3300 BCE, but they are much less reconstructed and have not been comprehensively excavated.

Loughcrew Megalithic Cemetery also known as Slieve na Cailliagh.

Although far less famous than Brú na Bóinne, Loughcrew is equally impressive though for different reasons: the lack of touristic infrastructure, the number of cairns in proximity, and the stunning 360° views over undulating farmland and quiet lakes. Most impressive of all, Cairn T can be entered when the key is available. On a private day tour, your driver guide can arrange access, bring a flashlight for the passage, and give you unhurried time inside the ancient mound among the carvings. It is a very powerful place.

The Loughcrew cairns are spread over Cairnbane (Carnbane) East (from carn, meaning pile or heap) and Cairnbane (Carnbane) West, the latter on private land. Cairnbane West include cairns A through L; Cairnbane East includes cairns R through W. The interior passage graves are usually described as constructed of limestone, but their composition includes sandstone, a coarse greywacke called gritstone, and conglomerate; the stones were either left by glaciers or taken from local outcrops.

Cairn H on Cairnbane West has multiple spirals on a kerbstone; excavations discovered first-century CE Iron Age objects. Cairn L has five side chambers and an interior carved standing stone. Cairn L is oriented toward the Imbolc/Samhain sunrise (just like the Mound of the Hostages on the Hill of Tara). These cairns are not accessible to the public because the owner does not allow people on his land.

Cairn T, also known as The Hag's Cairn, is the largest on Cairnbane East and can be entered when access is arranged. It is 37 m (120 feet) in diameter; its circumference is 113 m (369 feet); and it is oriented slightly south of east. At the end of the narrow passageway are a 3 m (10 feet) high domed chamber with corbelled roof and three side chambers, also with corbelled roofs. Fragments of charred bones, charcoal, and a bronze pin were found during the original excavation. Several of the interior stones in the passageway and in the inner chamber are decorated with geometric patterns, including circles and zigzags, and flower and sun motifs. From the summit, the passages turn the open countryside into part of the monument itself.

At Loughcrew Cairn T the rising sun on the mornings around the equinox illuminates the chamber.

Most impressive is the backstone of the rear chamber, which is lit by a beam of light during spring and fall equinox sunrises. On the north side of the mound is the Hag's Chair, a massive kerbstone shaped into a "chair." It has carvings on the front side, but they are barely discernible. A cross was carved into the "seat," perhaps in the eighteenth century, when it might have been used as an altar for holding secret outdoor masses during a time when public Catholic ritual was forbidden. The chair-like stone has been called Ollamh Fodhla's Seat, named after the mythic poet who was the first lawgiver of Ireland. It is also known as the Seat of the Cailleach, and folklore reports that you can sit there and make a wish-but only one. Traditions tell that Queen Tailte or Queen Medbhe (Maeve) sat on it and proclaimed laws, or that the old hag, the "Caillaigh Waura," sat on it.

The word "Cailleach" comes from "old veiled one": caille = veil or caul. Why veiled? She is veiled in mystery. The Cailleach was the ancient ancestral goddess found throughout Ireland and Scotland, and each tribe had its Cailleach. She was often associated with the Sovereignty of the land. She represented the dark side of the goddess, the side of death and rebirth, of transformation-and winter--in contrast to Brigid, goddess of healing, creative inspiration, eternal flame, and springtime. Her time is often said to begin at Samhain (November 1) and end on Imbolc (February 1), while Brigid rules the rest of the year. Numerous mountain ranges and large hills are said to have been formed when she accidentally dropped rocks out of her apron. She has similarities to the Hindu mother goddess Kali, another powerful transformative "dark" goddess. Medieval monks, who wrote down local stories, turned this powerful goddess of death and rebirth into a sad old hag. Later the word came to mean "nun": one who took the veil. And later still, it degenerated in common usage to mean "old bag."

Many visitors find the central chamber and side chambers of Cairn T especially atmospheric. For around 4,000 years the Cailleach, the winter earth goddess, has been associated with this hill, and that folklore still shapes how people experience the site. Perhaps Cairn T feels "recharged" twice each year when the equinox beam enters the chamber. You do not need to follow any particular belief to sense why this place has drawn people for millennia. On a guided visit there is time to pause in the different recesses, take in the carvings, and let your driver guide set the cairn in the wider story of Loughcrew and the Boyne Valley.

Powerful Places in Ireland