The National Trust in Northern Ireland recently organized a walking tour of Co. Antrim’s Giant’s Ring to draw attention to the enormous ancient site. Located near Belfast complete with its own Neolithic passage tomb, the Giant’s Ring is believed by archeologists to be as important as Stonehenge and Co. Louth’s Newgrange yet it’s far less popular.

I wasn’t familiar with the Giant’s Ring until now and I found out that it’s a pretty amazing structure. It’s a large circular enclosure with earthwork up to 12 ft/3.7 m high surrounding an open space of almost 600 ft/182 m in diameter and in total the area is about 7 acres. Inside the structure, sitting slightly off center, is a dolmen with five large stone slabs supporting a tilted capstone. The dolmen, which can be reached through five entrance gaps in the ring, dates back from around 3000 BC with the rest of the earthwork monument having been built a few years later. Interestingly, thousands of years later the Giant’s Ring was used for horse racing during the 18th century.

In case my description of the site is complete gibberish (it is Saturday), below is an image I took from Google Earth to give you a better idea of how impressive the Giant’s Ring truly is.

Source; Source; Source; Image Source

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