Brewel Hill Stone Circle may be a somewhat disturbed site, being broken up and surrounded by trees but there really is something beautiful about this place. The copse of pine trees stand on an embankment 60metres in diameter that I feel must be connected to the stones. The four stones are made up of one granite with linear cup-marks, two large quartz stones and one smaller stone. They are known locally as the ‘Piper’s Stones’, and one of the quartz stones that resembles a seat is known as the ‘Piper’s Chair’.
In the legend, three giants, pipers by profession, had a competition to see who could throw a stone the furthest. They chose Knuckadow hill about 2km south of Brewel, as the site to launch their rocks. The three rocks landed on top of Brewel Hill, the fourth smaller stone was thrown by a young ambitious piper who had watched the contest and wished to gain the respect of his elders. Another legend explains how the cup-marks came to be, it was either the aforementioned giants or Cúchulainn himself whose greyhound jumped from Knuckadow Hill or the Bog of Allen – in Cúchulainn’s case – and landed on one of the stones leaving its footprints embedded in the rock.
This site can be slightly tricky to find so I recommend following the google map attached to this post, also beware of many electric fences!
GPS: 53.0558, -6.7586
Lovely pictures…it looks like a fascinating site. But I thought it was Fionn mac Cumhall who was associated with the Bog of Allen…Cuchullain was the hound of Ulster.
That actually probably makes a lot more sense, only have one source for that Cúchullain tale, from 1931, will look into it further 🙂
What a place – it’s oozing mystery even from here! There’ve been yet more programmes on TV lately claiming to understand the reasons they were built, but I’m not convinced that anyone really knows and I rather prefer the mystery.