What is recorded here

Mangerton Mountain drops its last boy into the cauldron of sky. The water is black, the pressure is a living hand, and the boy must give up one year of his life to enter the palace beneath the sea. He refuses, because a year is a year of mother, bread and rain. The mountain waits. After a long time he returns with one year missing and a gift the kingdom cannot name.

In boggy hill pasture, on the flat summit of Mangerton Mountain with extensive views in all directions. A low roughly circular cairn (diam. 6m; H 0.3m) of compact, moss-covered stones on top of which is a more recently built cairn (diam. 3.5m; H 0.4m) of loose stones. A triangulation pillar protrudes (H 1.7m) from the centre. There are no visible remains of the three crosses formed of flat stones which Hayward (1987, 42) noted lying on the ground beside the cairn and which were said to mark burials (KE074-003002-). The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Kerry. Volume I: South-West Kerry' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2009). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload: 30 May 2011

A Neolithic cairn, likely a funerary monument, dating to the 4th–3rd millennium BCE. Its location on a prominent mountain summit suggests ritual or ceremonial significance, possibly as a territorial or landscape marker.

This remains an important historical record, but the official description says the monument is no longer visible or has been destroyed. The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.