Qualla: Ballygroll Prehistoric Landscape

Ballygroll Prehistoric Landscape: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Spence, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1815, a farmer in Ballygroll heard there was treasure buried in a Giant's Grave on his land and went out with a spade to find it. He lifted two flag stones and dug into the tomb. He did not find treasure. He found a Neolithic burial that he had just damaged forever. Across the south and west flanks of Loughermore Mountain, in the rolling drumlin country of County Londonderry, there is a small eleven-acre site that holds one of the densest concentrations of prehistoric monuments in Northern Ireland. Cairns. Stone alignments. Standing stones. Three different kinds of grave. A barrow. An entire ancient field wall system. Most of it has never been fully excavated. Most of it still lies under a protective blanket of peat, doing what peat does, which is keep secrets.

Image: Michael Spence | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballygroll Prehistoric Landscape: Five Thousand Years on a Hill

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Spence, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Ballygroll monuments span an enormous arc of time. The earliest constructions date to the Neolithic, perhaps 4000 BC, when farming first reached these islands and people began moving stones in patterns. The latest belong to the Late Bronze Age, roughly 1000 BC. That is three ...

Image: Michael Spence | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballygroll Prehistoric Landscape: What the Peat Saved

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Spence, CC BY-SA 4.0. The peat that covers most of the site is also what preserved it. After the climate cooled and wetted in the late Bronze Age, blanket bog began to spread across the Ulster uplands, swallowing the field walls and standing stones and tombs together. For three thousand years the bog ...

Image: Michael Spence | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballygroll Prehistoric Landscape: A Save in 1973

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Spence, CC BY-SA 4.0. Ballygroll almost did not survive. Around 1970 some of the ancient field walls in the neighbouring townland of Highmoor were completely removed as the land was turned from peat bog into arable ground. In 1978 a larger reclamation scheme was planned that would have destroyed much ...

Image: Michael Spence | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballygroll Prehistoric Landscape: The Field Walls Beneath

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Spence, CC BY-SA 4.0. Among the most important discoveries at Ballygroll are the ancient field walls themselves. In Ireland the great pre-bog field systems at Céide in County Mayo have made archaeologists rethink the scale and sophistication of Neolithic farming. The Ballygroll walls, though smaller, ...

Image: Michael Spence | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballygroll Prehistoric Landscape: What We Still Have Not Asked

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Spence, CC BY-SA 4.0. Ballygroll's quiet is its great virtue and its great problem. Because so little of it has been excavated, every assumption about it can still be tested by digging. Were the stone circles aligned to the solstices, as similar circles in Beaghmore and Ballynoe were? When were the we...

Image: Michael Spence | CC BY-SA 4.0