Known as the ‘Giant’s Grave’, this elusive feature has managed to shift position across three different Ordnance Survey maps, appearing in a different location each time. The original 1834 OS six-inch map placed it 50 metres southeast of what would become its 1905 position, whilst the 1848 edition showed it 90 metres to the southwest, actually crossing into the neighbouring townland of Kilwarry after a boundary change.

What makes this site particularly intriguing is that each survey team seemed to be documenting something entirely different. According to the 1848 Name Book, what the 1834 surveyors had marked as ‘Giant’s Grave’ was actually ‘an old altar where mass used to be said’, suggesting it was a penal mass rock from around 1808. The 1848 team, meanwhile, claimed to have found traces of a circular grave at their marked location, though they admitted it could ‘scarcely be traced’. By 1903, surveyors described finding ‘a cairn of stones supposed to have been the burial place of giants’ at yet another spot on the densely overgrown slope above the lough.

Today, visitors searching for this legendary giant’s resting place will find little to reward their efforts. The 1848 location near the lough shore shows no visible remains whatsoever, whilst only a small heap of slabs of uncertain origin marks the 1905 position. The antiquarian George Henry Kinahan tried unsuccessfully to locate the site in the late 19th century, and modern archaeological surveys have concluded there’s no convincing evidence that a megalithic tomb ever existed at any of the three proposed locations. Whether the Giant’s Grave was a misidentified natural feature, a conflation of different sites, or simply a product of local folklore that sent surveyors on a wild goose chase, it remains one of Donegal’s more peculiar cartographic mysteries.