Older than the Egyptian Pyramids: beautiful Giant's Ring, an ancient Irish neolithic tomb in Belfast

Giant’s Ring, believe it or not is pretty much in Belfast – near a place called Shaw’s Bridge on the river lagan. We’re maybe 20 mins from the city centre here by car and yet it’s almost as if were deep in the Irish countryside.

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This site is very special, although there’s no entrance fee, no gift shop, no tourists. It’s basically just a piece of common land that anyone can come and visit. It consists of a stone structure in the middle of a circular clearing. If I told you that this ancient stone tomb was between 4 and 5 thousand years old, would you believe me?

The circular flat ground round the stone tomb is completely surrounded by an embankment about 3.5 meters high. The area of this circle in which the tomb is located is 180 m in diameter and covers an area of 2.8 hectare’s.
It makes you wonder what this space was for. Who carved it out and what went on here. It is thought to have been a meeting place and a memorial for the dead. But, given its size, you’d assume that hundreds, maybe thousands of people might have gathered here. Really when you think about it it’s the stuff of epic movies! And to think that this place is hardly celebrated at all today – just a place, as you can see, for one man to walk his dogs.

The period in which this place was constructed was the neolithic period, around 2700BC. This means that this ancient site existed before the Pyramids of Egypt were built. So I guess we can only imagine the importance of this site in ancient times, which after all must have been a serious feat of engineering. Undoubtedly important people were buiried here under this stone monument, who they were, we don’t know.

Aside from its archeological importance, this site is simply a very beautiful place to be, respite from the busy city, and you can just see the hills of Belfast in the distance there.

The stones themselves may have been placed in order to take advantage of solar alignment on the winter solstice. This evidence of ‘solar cult’ as it’s known is found in other passage tombs throughout Ireland and further afield. You may have heard for example of Newgrange in the Boyne valley. While it is a more elaborate tomb, it also dates from this Neolithic era, though a bit earlier.

The stones are, aside from everything else, quite sculptural, and really very beautiful when seen up close. The site is now what’s known as a State Care Historic Monument and is designated as an Area of Significant Archaeological Interest