Cairn, Magheranaul, Co. Donegal
In the parish of Clonmany, County Donegal, a curious archaeological mystery persists around a site once marked on early Ordnance Survey maps as 'Cloghtogle'.
Cairn, Magheranaul, Co. Donegal
The feature appears in unpublished documents from the original 1834 six-inch survey, though frustratingly, no details about its nature were recorded. By the time later editions of the OS maps were produced, the name had vanished entirely, replaced by the more straightforward designation of ‘St. Buchan’s Burial Ground’.
Today, visitors to Magheranaul will find an irregular platform measuring 23 metres north to south and just over 31 metres east to west. At its highest point sits a small cairn topped with an upright slab, one of several stone markers believed to indicate grave sites. The burial ground occupies what appears to have been the same location as the enigmatic Cloghtogle shown on that 1834 map, though archaeological surveys have found little evidence to suggest the original term referred to a megalithic tomb, despite what the name might imply.
The site was documented by various antiquarians over the years, including William Copeland Borlase in 1897, and has been catalogued in Brian Lacy’s 1983 archaeological survey of the region. Whilst the exact nature of the original ‘Cloghtogle’ remains uncertain, the burial ground itself continues to serve as a tangible link to the area’s religious past, with its collection of grave markers standing as silent testimony to centuries of local burial traditions.





