Qualla: Ring of Gullion https://qualla.com/ring-of-gullion en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/7/ring-of-gullion-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Ring of Gullion https://qualla.com/ring-of-gullion Ring of Gullion: Introduction https://qualla.com/ring-of-gullion/ Photo credit Dieglop, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sixty-six million years ago - around the time the asteroid was falling toward Yucatan - a volcano was tearing open the crust of what would one day be South Armagh. As the Atlantic split open and Greenland began drifting away from Europe, magma rose along a circular fracture and a great composite caldera collapsed in on itself. What is left now, after the Ice Ages scoured everything else away, is a ring of hills enclosing a single rugged mountain at the centre. Geologists call it a ring dyke. The Ring of Gullion was the first one of these structures ever recognised on Earth, and the rocks here have been driving geological debate since the 1950s.

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Image: Dieglop | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/7/ring-of-gullion-wp/gce7-ring-of-gullion-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Ring of Gullion: The First Ring Dyke https://qualla.com/ring-of-gullion/ Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Ring of Gullion is a roughly circular arrangement of hills enclosing about 150 square kilometres of County Armagh, with Slieve Gullion - the highest peak in the county at 573 metres - rising at its centre. The geology is genuinely peculiar. The outer rim is made of two concen...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/7/ring-of-gullion-wp/gce7-ring-of-gullion-the-first-ring-dyke.mp3 0:06 2 full Ring of Gullion: Cailleach Beara's House https://qualla.com/ring-of-gullion/ Photo credit Liam Hughes from Milwaukee, WI, USA, CC BY 2.0. On the very summit of Slieve Gullion, beside a small dark lough that is the highest body of water on the island of Ireland, stands the South Cairn - a passage tomb that is the highest surviving Neolithic passage grave in Britain or Ireland. Locals call it Cailleach Beara's House,...

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Image: Liam Hughes from Milwaukee, WI, USA | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/7/ring-of-gullion-wp/gce7-ring-of-gullion-cailleach-bearas-house.mp3 0:06 3 full Ring of Gullion: The District of Poets https://qualla.com/ring-of-gullion/ Photo credit XxJohnXF, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the eighteenth century, when Irish-language literature was making its last great flowering before the Famine and the schools wore it down, the Ring of Gullion was known as Ceantar na bhFile - the District of Poets - or sometimes the District of Songs. The hills around Slieve G...

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Image: XxJohnXF | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/7/ring-of-gullion-wp/gce7-ring-of-gullion-the-district-of-poets.mp3 0:06 4 full Ring of Gullion: Six Thousand Years of Stones https://qualla.com/ring-of-gullion/ Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. People have lived in the Ring of Gullion for at least six thousand years. The hills are scattered with about twenty large stone tombs: the Clontygora Court Tomb, sometimes called the King's Ring; the Ballymacdermot Court Tomb, also superbly preserved; and Ballykeel Portal Tomb, a...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/7/ring-of-gullion-wp/gce7-ring-of-gullion-six-thousand-years-of-stones.mp3 0:06 5 full Ring of Gullion: A Cavern That Was Never Filled https://qualla.com/ring-of-gullion/ Photo credit Peter Lyons, CC BY-SA 2.0. By Camlough Lake - the Crooked Lake, largest in the Ring - sits a tunnel about a kilometre long, wide enough to drive an articulated truck into. It was cut into the mountainside in the 1960s for an ambitious pumped-hydro scheme. The plan was to hollow a great cavern inside Slieve...

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Image: Peter Lyons | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/7/ring-of-gullion-wp/gce7-ring-of-gullion-a-cavern-that-was-never-filled.mp3 0:06 6 full