Knocknarea
— the cairn the centuries keep adding to.
Not only on a wall.
“A flat-topped limestone hill above Sligo Bay, crowned by a cairn the size of a small church. Tradition says it holds Queen Maeve, the warrior queen of Connacht, standing upright in her armour facing her old enemies in Ulster. Tradition also says each walker carries a stone up and adds it to the cairn. The pile has been growing in this way for five thousand years. The walk is short and steep. The wind at the top has worked on the place a long time. From the summit the view runs over most of Sligo, the Atlantic, and on a clear day the flat head of Ben Bulben to the north.
Knocknarea, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Knocknarea (Cnoc na Riabh) is a 327-metre limestone hill on the Cúil Irra peninsula in County Sligo, in the northwest of Ireland's Connacht province. It rises from sea level on the Atlantic side and stands isolated above the Coolera peninsula, with the town of Sligo five kilometres to the northeast and Strandhill village at its western foot. The summit is reached by a maintained trail from the eastern car park at Grange North, a walk of roughly two kilometres each way with about 270 metres of climb. The peninsula sits between Sligo Bay and Ballysadare Bay, and on a clear day the view takes in Ben Bulben, the Ox Mountains, Lough Arrow, and a long stretch of the Atlantic.
The cairn at the summit, called Miosgán Méabha or Maeve's Cairn, is one of the largest unopened megalithic monuments in Ireland: roughly 55 metres across and 10 metres high, an estimated 27,000 tonnes of hand-piled limestone and quartz. Archaeologists place its construction in the Neolithic period, around 3000 BCE, contemporary with the nearby Carrowmore passage tomb cemetery four kilometres east. The Irish folk name comes from Queen Medb of Connacht, the legendary warrior queen of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, said to be buried beneath it standing upright and armoured. The cairn has never been excavated. Walkers are asked not to climb on it; the local custom is to carry a stone up and add it to the base.
The hill is open to walkers all year and there is no admission fee. The standard ascent starts at the Knocknarea (Grange North) car park signposted from the R292 between Sligo and Strandhill, a maintained boardwalk-and-stone path of about two kilometres each way that takes most people forty-five minutes up and thirty down. There is a smaller, steeper trail from the Strandhill side. Weather changes quickly on the western coast: the summit can be in sun while Sligo Bay is in cloud. Sturdy shoes and a wind layer are sensible even in summer. Dogs are welcome on a lead. Sligo County Council manages the trailheads and asks that visitors not climb on the cairn itself.