What is recorded here

Lurgan Small Stone Enclosure / Cairn is an eight-metre circular chamber on Lurgan Ridge where a five-metre deep stone-filled pit still marks the centre. Its overgrown wall keeps two narrow gaps for entry, while a low clay ridge cuts across the western half. Davies called it a flattened cairn, but the chamber shape resists that label. The chamber may have measured breath, stored seed or held a dead person, yet no written account names the hands that built it.

Internal diam. c. 8m. A small circular area enclosed by an overgrown stone wall surviving up to .7m in height and up to 2.5m in width. Two gaps .5m, in width, occur in the wall one to the N and another to the W. A low ridge of stones and clay runs through the W half of the enclosure. The interior is fairly level but there is a pit 2m × 0.9m and 5m in depth filled with small stones at the centre. Davies recorded a fosse 13ft wide but this is no longer apparent. Situated on Lurgan Ridge in good pasture. There are drops to the S and E. The small size of the monument presents difficulties as to its interpretation. Davies records it as a 'Flattened Cairn'. (NMI). The above description was derived from the 'Archaeological Survey of County Donegal. A description of the field antiquities of the County from the Mesolithic Period to the 17th century.' Compiled by: Brian Lacey with Eamon Cody, Claire Cotter, Judy Cuppage, Noel Dunne, Vincent Hurley, Celie O'Rahilly, Paul Walsh and Seán Ó Nualláin (Lifford: Donegal County Council, 1983). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated. Date of upload: 22 September 2008

A Neolithic stone cairn or small ritual enclosure, likely dating to the 4th–3rd millennium BCE. Its circular layout and low wall suggest a ceremonial or funerary function, typical of early prehistoric monumentality in the region.

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