Mystery of Killycluggin Stone remains 50 years on

The Killycluggin Stone, a remarkable piece of ancient Irish heritage, distinguished by its intricate Celtic carvings and mysterious origins, was removed from the site in which it was found in West Cavan and brought for study to the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin 50 years ago.

Approximately 1.2 metres high, the limestone surface is adorned with a series of highly stylised motifs- spirals, curved lines, and other geometric patterns- characteristics unique to the La Tène artistic tradition that thrived from around 450 BC to the Roman conquest in the first century AD.

Today the remaining fragments of the anthropomorphic-shaped monolith, which scholars believe connects the natural and spiritual beliefs of Iron Age Celts, is a focal point of Cavan County Museum’s archaeological collection.

A replica version meanwhile is positioned in the village of Ballymagauran near to where the stone was first discovered.

One of less than half a dozen aniconic stones known in Ireland, and distinct in that it is the only example currently preserved within a county museum, the Killycluggin is “extremely important for lots of reasons,” states Maeve Sikora, current Keeper of Irish Antiquities at the National Museum.

She explains that the Killycluggin, through its preservation, continues to shine a light on a “dimly understood” area of our past.

“The Iron Age in general is probably the period where, for us as archaeologists, it’s the most challenging to piece together what society might have been or looked like, because we don’t have huge quantities of material or evidence like we do for, for example, the Bronze Age, where we have lots and lots of burials including some from Cavan.

“So I can’t really over emphasise the importance of [the Killycluggin] from that point of view.”

Where the Killycluggin opens a window into the past is that it is decorated in such a way that it connects with other artefacts from early first century, such as scabbards detailed with tightly wound spirals and decorated bone flakes found at the passage tombs at nearby Lough Crew in neighbouring Meath.

But why the stone was decorated in the way it was is still up for conjecture, though there are many who believe it reflects the religious practices of Irish people before the arrival of Christianity in the 5th century.

Eamonn ‘Ned’ Kelly retired from the National Museum of Ireland in 2014 after working for more than 40 years as a professional archaeologist, during which time he also served, among other esteemed roles, as Keeper of Irish Antiquities (1992-2014).

A native of Dublin, he descended from hill farmers on his father’s side, and from an early age displayed a keen interest in natural history growing up by the banks of the Dodder in Firhouse.

He attended UCD to study archaeology. “I remember my father asking ‘are there any jobs in that?’. I didn’t know what to say to him. An important question for a parent to ask I suppose. ‘There are loads’ I said back to him,” Kelly chuckles down the phone from his home now in rural Connemara.

It was while studying that ‘Ned’ first met Barry Raftery, then Professor of Celtic Archaeology at the Glasnevin campus.

When Kelly started his post-grad, he was invited to work with Raftery, and the pair set about working on excavating Rathgall Hillfort, a bronze age site of immense antiquity near Shillelagh, Co Wicklow, and the neolithic burial mound at Baunogenasraid in Wicklow.

Raftery, who sadly passed away in 2010, was son of Joseph, himself an archaeologist specialising in prehistoric Ireland, who also was Keeper of Irish antiquities and Director of the National Museum of Ireland at the time.

Killycluggin was another site on Raftery’s extensive list, and so the two men decamped to Cavan for about a week in mid-1974 to fulfil a request to have the stone removed and taken to the National Museum for further examination.

The pair stayed at the home of Patrick ‘Big Packie’ Donohoe, owner of a supermarket in Ballyconnell, and who previously ran a pub on the town’s Main Street.

“I was kind of shocked,” admits Kelly reflecting on the passage of time that has lapsed.

Kelly remembers the Killycluggin was located close to a stone circle, half buried, and that Raftery wanted to have the site mapped before any excavation was carried out.

“Barry’s father Joe was keeper of antiquities, a position I later inherited, and they wanted the stone to be brought in and exhibited. That involved the stone being properly excavated. But before it was moved, the whole complex needed to be surveyed. So that was my role really,” he says looking back 50 years.

What piqued their interest in examining it further was the “writed tradition” relating to Crom Cruach, a pagan deity of pre-Christian Ireland, worshipped since the time of Érimón, propitiated it’s thought, with human sacrifice.

The legendary narrative is that Saint Patrick struck the stone with his crozier, causing damage to the god idol, which then sunk into the earth.

Ollie Brady, a local historian from Templeport, whose father’s family grew up in the townland of Killycluggin, picks up the story.

What Ollie doesn’t know of the history of the area possibly isn’t worth noting. Even still, he remembers most if not all, filing it away in his mind under miscellaneous until such time as it might become relevant.

He’s been of assistance down through the years to various others who’ve visited the area to carry out their own historical studies. Most recently Brady assisted archaeologist Kevin White, who used his thesis ‘The Plain of Blood’ to examine the landscape of Magh Slecht, a niche area containing over 30 prehistoric monuments.

White believed that Magh Slecht was once a site of great importance, and hypothesised the nearby enclosure of Derryragh acted as a focal point, and that the stone’s discovery near a ceremonial site suggests it may have been part of a larger ritual complex.

Brady doesn’t doubt this theory, or the many others.

Found in on a drizzly April day in 1922, in a field owned by William Bannon just behind Currin National School, Brady explains: “They were ploughing and they hit this stone and they didn’t pass another bloody stone, so they started to take lumps out of this anyhow with sledges before they realised there were these markings on top of it. So they dug down, and that’s how the stone was first found.”

Some years later Sean P. O’Riordain found the second fragment in the same field as the first, but further downslope.

The intricacies of the stone’s markings were recorded from that point by various historians, from RV Walker to Robert MacAlister, but it wasn’t until 52 years later it was surveyed properly following an order in 1993 to have it protected under the National Monuments Act.

“The peculiar thing about it was it had a decorated face on it,” says Ollie, before referencing the research of John P. Dalton, published the February before the stone was found. “It brought him to Derryagh Fort, a couple miles west of Killycluggin, and in the April William Bannon hit the stone. There’s an opinion the real Crom idol could have been the Killycluggin.”

Brady’s belief is the Killycluggin once stood at the centre of a stone circle. It’s location, or relocation perhaps, was out of preservation, after many others were either repurposed or destroyed during the spread of Christianity across the island.

“It wasn’t just f**ked willy nilly into a hole,” states Brady bluntly. “The stone was buried in an upright position, the position it would have been when above ground. The St Patrick story is the idol sank down. More likely the druids moved it, and left it the way the Celtic warriors were suppose to be buried, with two mighty pillar stones guarding.”

When Kelly and Raftery arrived to conduct their own study the stone was already broken, and thus their search took them to scanning old field walls where they found other fragments.

Both men also subscribed to the thought the Killycluggin site suggested it has been smashed through Christian zeal.

The main masse of the stone though required a crane to lift. Raftery wrote after: ‘The stone stood in a flat-bottomed pit which had been deliberately sunk 80cm into the subsoil to receive it’.

The men undertook a limited excavation, and the stone over the years had become weathered and overgrown.

“The OPW came out with lifting gear, a sort of tripod, set up with scaffolding, and they put chains around to lift it,” says Kelly looking back. “But the stone was heavier than they anticipated and it shifted. I remember everyone sort of getting back very quickly. It wouldn’t have been very pleasant to have the Killycluggin lap.”

Kelly considers Cavan and its surrounding region fascinating for its wealth of pre-Christian history, from the Corleck head to Magh Slecht in Templeport, cairns, and the various representations of sheela na gigs and other idols found at Ralaghan, Lough Ramor and Tomreagn.

Through his interest in Cavan and his role as keeper in latter years, Kelly crossed paths with the likes of Thomas J Barron, a local man noted for his lifelong interest in researching the famous tricephallic Corleck Head. It resulted in a promise made to Barron that any objects channelled by him to the National Museum would one day be returned when a suitable space was found.

That came in with the opening of the County Museum in Ballyjamesduff in 1996, when then Curator Dominic Egan and Margaret Lannin, Antiquities Division at the National Museum, helped oversee the safe arrival of the Killycluggin Stone and other items back to Cavan.

The stone was lifted into the former Convent of the Poor Sisters of Saint Clare building through a downstairs window, and its incredible weight meant the floor needed to be re-enforced first.

It was an “important” moment regards Kelly.

“It has been, for a long time, part of the policy and ambition of the National Museum to do that,” he says. “Not just to some run down building left over by the local authority, but to a professionally run museum. The day a museum opens isn’t the end of a project, its only the beginning,” he adds, before paying tribute to the role former County Manager, the late Brian Johnston, played in its realisation. “I know he had to overcome difficulties to achieve his ambitions there. I thought he was a very committed public servant and committed to the people of Cavan,” recalls Kelly

Former County Museum curator, Savina Donohoe, spent almost 23 years of her working life walking past the Killycluggin Stone, among thousands of other unique artefacts whose history is deeply related to this county.

She was only a teenager when the Killycluggin Stone was first removed from its site near Ballymagauran in 1974, and started working at the museum three years after it first opened.

Savina was curator then at the museum from 2008 until her retirement in 2021.

She is thankful for her time spent working there, and looks back on that chapter of her life with a great fondness.

“The fact we have a museum, to a standard that we can house objects like the Killycluggin Stone for the people of Cavan, is fantastic,” says Savina. “Because Cavan County Council has committed to having a museum we can continue to have displays of that standard.”

The ambition was the stone pieces would be reattached, but that to date hasn’t happened. There are also artefacts still in the National Museum that Savina, and others, would one day love to see returned for display. But she accepts “it’s not just that simple”.

“Every county in Ireland is the same. We’re a long way off, but it is something we must keep striving towards. We would love to see the Corleck Head, the original to be in Cavan. But to have what we do have is unbelievable, and it’s a testament to everyone who has worked to make that happen.”

Much like the Killycluggin Stone, Savina believes it is inherent in all Irish people the ability to “tell a story”.

“And add to it of course,” she laughs. “Storytelling is so important. In the age of computers, to go back to the art of talking, or even writing a letter, to listen even, this is how we pass on and capture our heritage. I know the future and the present is so important, but we mustn’t forget our past.”

Sikora, as Keeper of Antiquities, wonders whether the meaning behind the Killycluggin will ever fully be realised.

“It’s prehistoric in a way, and we’re using these kinds of objects to interpret. There are so many things certainly about the art that are distinctive and important, important for Ireland in the context of our long-range heritage, that you later see then pulled right through to the early Christian period where they’re still using these motifs, in wonderful design and craftsmanship. The Killycluggin is really part of that story.”

Kelly agrees, and expands on his own thoughts regarding the “richness” of heritage contained within Cavan, and the importance of having a County Museum in sharing that with the people.

“It was a Connaught county, the kings of Cavan, the O’Rourkes and the O’Reillys, they were present in Roscommon whenever a king was inaugurated. Cavan has a lot of diverse identities. At a later date you have the plantation of Ulster, an extensive protestant culture and identity also, and it adds to the whole richness of the place. These are aspects which the County Museum have had to take on board, in a very good and sensitive way. It takes talent to deal with subjects, and address real aspects of history, so that people learn about each other, their backgrounds and beliefs.”