Ballynoe, county Down - viewed from the South.
A portalled entrance at the W with stones 2.1 metres apart (marked with the
letter A) faces (but is not actually aligned) West - i.e. on the rising
and setting sun half-way between midwinter and midsummer (around March 21st).
A slightly off-centre axial stone with a bevelled horizontal top edge is just
behind the portal stones (behind the letter B).
Directly opposite the Western flat-topped stone is another (below the letter
C) not-quite-aligned to the E (on the rising equinoctial sun) and the circle
at Swinside in Cumbria -190 kms across the Irish Sea - to which the Ballynoe
circle is thought to be twinned.
The Ballynoe circle lies at 54° 17' 35" North.
The Swinside circle is at 54° 16' 56" North.
In between them, on the Isle of Man, lies Ballafayle Long Cairn at 54° 17' 1"
North.
On days of good visibility the mountains of Cumbria are visible
from the nearest high ground (about 8 kms NE of Ballynoe), as well as the nearer
Isle of Man, the peak of whose highest mountain, Snæfell, is slightly South
of the relevant latitude, at 54° 15' 52".
On some days the Isle of Man and Cumbria seem to be half as far away as they
actually are.
But the stone circle has no views to the east, and is virtually invisible
from all eastern and south-eastern approaches, and there is no view from it
either to the nearest prominent megalithic tomb at Slievenagriddle,
nor to the significant marker of Snæfell on the Isle of Man - just as at Swinside
in Cumbria there is no view to the west, though the Mountains of Mourne rise
dramatically from the sea to the SW.
Click on the picture to see the same view in snow.
Click on the camera for a
view from the North-east.
And
click here for a slide-show.