‘Lios na Grainsi’ – Ireland’s Largest Stone Circle

A. Sutherland - AncientPages.com - The ancient stone circle known as 'Stones of the Sun (In Irish, 'Lios na Grainsi') was built around 2000 BC by the people who brought metal and beaker pottery to Ireland around 2500 BC.

It is the largest standing stone circle in Ireland, 150 feet in diameter and enclosed by 113 standing stones.Photo: via Ireland's Hidden Gems

Enclosed by 113 standing stones, the Grange Stone Circle is Ireland's largest ancient standing stone circle. It is over 65 m (215 ft) in diameter.

It is located 300m west of Lough Gur in County Limerick, Ireland. It has an almost perfect circular shape and is positioned so that the sun shines directly into the center at the summer solstice.

Lough Gur Stone Circle has always been shrouded in myth and mystery, like the entire area surrounding the fascinating Lough Gur, where humans have lived near Lough Gur since 3000 BC.

The circle's largest standing stone is the monumental Ronnach Croim Duibh (the prominent Black Stone), which is over 13 feet high and weighs 40 tons.

Grange Stone Circle. Image credit: Jon Sullivan (PD Photo.org) - Public Domain

The entrance stones are also worth special attention. They are large slabs on the southwest side, whose tops slope toward each other to form a v-shape.

Based on a calculation, these stones and the entranceway were aligned with the sunset of the Festival of Samhain.

 

This Gaelic festival marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, or the "darker half" of the year.

Traditionally, this festival (one of four Gaelic festivals) is celebrated from the very beginning of one Celtic day to its end, or in the modern calendar, from sunset on 31 October to evening on 1 November, and places it about halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice.

The Grange Stone Circle was excavated in 1939, and the researchers dated the structure to the Late Neolithic; others proposed that the Líos was constructed in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1000 BC) on a site that may have been sacred for thousands of years.

No other structures except for the circle were found at the site.

Still, archaeologists discovered a few unburnt human bones, two hearths, animal bones (mainly cattle), bronze materials, and numerous Neolithic sherds of pottery.

Some of the pottery unearthed at the circle's site seemed to have been deliberately broken.

Written by – A. Sutherland  - AncientPages.com Senior Staff Writer

Updated on October 9, 2022

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