When cartographers from the Ordnance Survey mapped this area for their detailed 6-inch maps in the 19th century, they carefully marked the location of this ancient cemetery. Yet when archaeologists returned to document the site decades later, they found only an overgrown rocky ridge where the burial ground should have been, the landscape having reclaimed whatever monuments once stood there.

The site sits on light, thin soil that would have been better suited to grazing sheep than growing crops, typical of many ancient burial sites in Ireland where the dead were often interred on marginal land. This particular location was documented as part of the comprehensive Archaeological Survey of County Donegal, an ambitious project completed in 1983 that catalogued field antiquities spanning from the Mesolithic Period right through to the 17th century. The survey, compiled by Brian Lacey and his team of archaeologists, represents one of the most thorough archaeological inventories ever undertaken in Ireland.

What makes this burial ground particularly intriguing is its apparent disappearance; a cemetery substantial enough to warrant inclusion on official maps has seemingly vanished into the landscape. Whether the stones were removed for building materials, became buried under centuries of vegetation, or were simply misidentified by early surveyors remains a mystery. The rocky ridge that marks the spot today offers few clues to the generations who once brought their dead to this lonely hillside in Donegal.