Ballygroll Prehistoric Landscape

Ballygroll Prehistoric Landscape is an 11 acre site in the townland of Ballygroll, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It is a Scheduled Monument and a Monument in State Care. The range and extent of the monuments is remarkable ranging in age from the Neolithic Period until the Late Bronze Age. Most of the monuments on the site have not been fully excavated but it includes several cairns, alignments, standing stones, three different types of grave, a barrow, and a field wall system.

Background
The area around the south and west flanks of Loughermore Mountain was first recorded as being an area with a significant number of ancient monuments in Ordnance Survey memoirs in 1835. However, many of these monuments have been damaged or destroyed. In 1815, a 'Giant’s Grave' was damaged by the landowner when he heard there was treasure buried there. He dug into the grave and removed two flag stones. It is likely that other monuments in the area were destroyed by others in a vain search for treasure over the years. Other monuments were destroyed as the area began to be turned from peat bog, which had preserved the monuments, into arable land. Around 1970 some of the ancient field walls were completely removed in the Highmoor townland, just north of Ballygroll. The whole area was threatened with further damage or destruction by a scheme planned for 1978, however an 11 acre site was saved, when the land was transferred to the Department of the Environment in 1973.

The first proper description of the monuments occurred in 1940, however no full excavations occurred until 1978 when a 6m square segment of the field walls in the Mullaboy townland were excavated. A second excavation occurred in 1979 when archaeologists excavated a covered mound that they discovered was a barrow. The remaining sites have not been fully excavated, and are all at least partly covered in a layer of peat.

List of Ancient Monuments
The following list describes the different ancient monuments that are part of the site.