What is recorded here

Lurgan Carn is a grass-grown mound fifteen metres wide, topped by a modern surveying pillar that marks the exact centre of a forgotten chamber. It sits inside a smaller embankment, which itself is swallowed by a vast D-shaped hillfort clinging to the edge of a steep escarpment. People may have built the great curve to keep out invaders or to hold something sacred, but the collapsed stones no longer answer that question. The mound remains visible only because its shadow stretches across the grass at the end of the day.

Killanin and Duignan (1962; 1967) refer to a 'chambered cairn' in this townland. The feature is a grass-grown mound or cairn c. 15m in diameter and up to 1m high. An OS trigonometrical pillar has been built on it. The nature of any structure that the mound may cover is not known. The mound stands toward the NE edge of an embanked enclosure [DG103-072001-] c. 35m in diameter, and both are within a great D-shaped enclosure [DG103-072----] measuring c. 340m N-S by c. 200m E-W. This great enclosure is delimited at the E by a steep natural escarpment and elsewhere by the collapsed remains of a stone wall that curves around the top of the hill. It appears to be a hillfort, although it has been suggested (G.P. and O.D. 1942) that it is a Neolithic enclosure. (Patterson and Davies 1942, 137; Deery 1948, 101 ('Lurgan Cairn'); Davies and Evans 1961-2, 4; Killanin and Duignan 1962, 78; Killanin and Duignan 1967, 89; Lacy 1983, 148-9, no. 886). The above description is derived from the 'Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland. Volume VI, County Donegal.' Compiled by: Eamon Cody (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2002). Updated by: Paul Walsh Date of upload: 3 November 2014

Chambered cairn, likely dating to the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age. Its construction and positioning suggest ritual or funerary significance, typical of megalithic traditions in Ireland.

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