There’s a lay by just before Killadangan on the road to Murrisk, where the view to the west takes in Croagh Patrick and Clare Island in the distance guarding Clew bay. Over a few weeks last winter, I stopped there every morning, taking a photograph in the same spot as winter drew in and snow sometimes draped the mountaintop. In spring, the pandemic arrived and the visits stopped, outside of the allowed range of travel. Confined to visiting on Google Maps, I noticed that there was a site just 50 metres along the road. It was in every photo I had taken but was far more noticeable from the air. When the travel restrictions eased in June, I headed back out to the site to take a closer look.
There’s a plaque at the entrance, and the text is taken from the only major piece of research on Killadangan, which was written in 1998 by Christiaan Corlett, an archaeologist with the National Monument Service. It reads:
The extent of this grouping of monuments suggests that this was a major ceremonial site. What is most remarkable about the enclosure is the stone row (four stones standing, one has fallen down), which increases in height from north to south, drawing the eye up to a niche in the eastern shoulder of Croagh Patrick. At about 1.50 p.m. on December 21st, the winter solstice, the sun dips into this little niche or kink in the mountain. At this point, the sun is directly in line with the row of stones, before disappearing shortly afterwards behind the mountain.
It may seem strange that the state has paid little attention to many of the ancient sites on the west coast of Ireland, and that many of the oldest monuments get not so much as a signpost. But consider this: it’s just 60 years since the site of Newgrange was rediscovered and restored, after being closed in for thousands of years. Its grand restoration was also a function of being close to Dublin. Killadangan might have been the greatest ceremonial centre in Ireland for all we know. One thing is certain: it’s the last major site the pilgrim encountered on the way to the mountaintop. Killadangan would have loomed into sight along the last stretch into Murrisk.
Through the gate, the visitor is first struck by the circular banks running around the eastern shore. To the left, what looks like the remains of an old road runs up from the shore and aligns with the coast road after the turn going west. Now the eye picks out the remaining stones, running in a ring forty or forty-five metres from the stone row.
These days, Killadangan is a place you would only really notice on foot. It’s behind a wall at a hard bend in the road, and in a car or on a bicycle, it’s a not the time to gaze into the fields. Killadangan now sits right on the sea, though an avenue that runs past the circle straight on to the modern road looks as though it once came in from the nearby islands. On the low tides, it’s possible to get across to those islands with a pair of wellingtons, and a few times I saw startled sheep take off across the short stretch.
The mountain of Croagh Patrick, like many sites along the old route from the east, has been Saint Patrick-ified. The abbey at Ballintubber has revived the Tochar Padraig, the Christian pilgrimage from Ballintubber Abbey to Croagh Patrick, but they don’t attempt to hide the pre-Christian roots of the pilgrimage. Along the way though, many of the interesting sites get no plaque or indicator, and you have to look hard to find them, while there’s no end of Patrick’s wells, or Patrick’s beds, and Patrick’s churches. Whatever the names, all of those sites mark magnetic lines, and also places where those lines cross underground water flows.
And while the state archaeologists are officially puzzled as to the meanings of these old rock carvings, they are missing what’s a remarkably simple answer. The carvings are pictures of energy flows. Sometimes they’re mapped out on the ground as concentric rings. Within a few kilometres of Killadangan, back along the route, there are slabs and stones engraved with the descriptions of the surrounding sites.
Standing by the remaining stones I can see underfoot that it’s a chamber, likely once covered with a cairn, perhaps even cloaked in quartz to shine on moonlit nights. I let a pendant swing, and watched as it started to loop counter-clockwise. Back on the perimeter, it continued its counter-clockwise motion. I looked up at the mountain and had the feeling that I was standing on the negative terminal of a battery.
A few weeks later, driving east one evening towards Killadangan, close to sunset, it seemed as if the tips of some of the stones were sparkling. As I came closer, I saw seagulls standing on the stones, all facing the setting sun. Even here, at the end of the road, you can feel you have much left to learn.