Description

Coords: 54.09072 -6.17965 Map: http://binged.it/1FTCpqP Overlooking Carlingford Lough & nearby town of Rostrevor, the Cloughmore Stone at Kilbroney Park is a large granite boulder (c5m x 3.2m x 2.3m) with a calculated mass of c50 Metric Tonnes, sitting on a metasedimentary rock outcrop. Its name derives from the Irish ‘An Chloch Mór’ (the Big Stone) & features in a local legend that the giant Fionn Mac Cumhaill (Finn MacCool) threw the stone from Slieve Foye, across Carlingford Lough, during a fight with a rival. A glacial erratic is a piece of rock that differs from the size & type of rock native to the area on which it rests, is often carried over distances of hundreds of kilometres & then deposited by the ice during glacial retreat. The granite of the Cloughmore Stone probably originated in Scotland & is one of the larger erratics found around the outcrop deposited during ice retreat some 14000 years ago. Click on the ‘Annotation’ numbers to get info on the Cloughmore Stone. Model © Conor Graham 2015