Ballinloughan, county Louth

H 966 057 - Sheet 36

1.6 km N of Little Ash, by a stream in the second field (300 metres along a track to the right of a gate) beyond the end of a lane leading NE from the road to Inniskeen from Little Ash, lies (or lay) a boulder (not marked on the map) with complex motifs of cups and gapped rings.
There were originally five boulders here - of which three were wantonly destroyed in 1980.
They included a design rare in Ireland: the ring of small cups within a cup-and-ring design (cf Ormaig in Argyll).
The pocking on this design and on some of the others could clearly be seen.
They were the most interesting and most easily found (!) of a series of petroglyphs in W Louth and E Monaghan.
Another stone similar to the one by the stream is now in the National Museum in Dublin.





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