Qualla: Ardgroom

Ardgroom: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eileen Henderson, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Irish name Dhá Dhrom means simply 'two ridges'. The two ridges in question are Dromárd and Drombeg, a pair of low gravelly hills left here by a retreating glacier at the end of the last ice age, around twelve thousand years ago. The English name Ardgroom evolved later, and slightly misleadingly, but the geology behind the place name is honest. Walk out from the village in any direction and you find yourself on glacial debris: rounded boulders dumped by a melting ice sheet, a freshwater lough nearby in Glenbeg, and beyond all of it the Slieve Miskish Mountains rising behind the coast. Somewhere in that landscape, between three and four thousand years ago, people built a stone circle that is still mostly upright.

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Image: Eileen Henderson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ardgroom: Eleven Stones, Nine Still Standing

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Cox, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Ardgroom stone circle, sometimes called Canfea after its townland, stands about a mile east of the village, off the old Kenmare road. Eleven stones form the original ring; nine of them are still upright, an outlier stands a short distance away in what archaeologists call an a...

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Image: Nigel Cox | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ardgroom: What the Builders Were Doing

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. Stone circles on the Beara peninsula belong, in the broadest sense, to the same Bronze Age tradition that runs across Ireland and Britain. They were almost certainly not pure observatories, although some appear oriented to solstice sunrises or moon-sets. They were almost certainl...

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Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ardgroom: And Plenty More Nearby

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Cox, CC BY-SA 2.0. About a mile northeast of the main circle lie the remains of another, less complete stone circle. There are at least two ring forts in the immediate vicinity, plus a scatter of standing stones and short stone rows. The Beara peninsula is one of the densest archaeological landscap...

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Image: Nigel Cox | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ardgroom: Living Above Kenmare River

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Cox, CC BY-SA 2.0. Ardgroom looks out across the Kenmare River, a long sea inlet rather than a true river, with the mountains of the Iveragh Peninsula rising on the far shore. To the south the land climbs into the Slieve Miskish range; to the west the Beara peninsula narrows toward Eyeries and even...

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Image: Nigel Cox | CC BY-SA 2.0