Sixteen granite boulders stand in a rough ring on a low hill in west Wicklow, and local tradition says they were once people. The story goes that a piper and a group of dancers were caught making merry on the Sabbath and turned to stone where they stood – the ring the dancers, a lone stone off to the north-east the piper who played for them. The archaeology is quieter. This is a Bronze Age stone circle, built somewhere between roughly 1400 and 500 BC, on a hillock the Irish called Achadh Gréine, the field of the sun.
The circle
The stones range from about 1.3 to 1.9 metres tall and sit in a ring around 23 metres across. Sixteen survive today, though only five are thought to stand where they were first raised. An Ordnance Survey record from 1941 counted twenty-nine, so the circle you see is a remnant of something larger. A few of the boulders carry faint megalithic markings – shallow grooves and cup-marks, worn almost flat by three thousand years of weather. The piper stands apart, about 36 metres to the north-east and a little taller than the rest.
Set among the stones is an old gnarled hawthorn, the kind of tree Irish folk tradition leaves well alone. Its branches are usually tied with scraps of cloth and ribbon, offerings left by visitors – the same folk memory that named the place, still going. There is a second version of the legend, less often told, in which the dancers went up in flames rather than to stone. Take your pick.
Getting there
The circle sits on a low rise overlooking the N81, about 2 km south of Hollywood and on the main road running down towards Baltinglass. There is a small lay-by on the hard shoulder and a marked entrance beside it. From there it is a short walk uphill across a field to the stones, a few minutes at most. The reward at the top is the setting as much as the stones: open farmland rolling away west, and the Wicklow hills standing behind you.
It is a National Monument in state guardianship, listed as an unguided site with no admission charge.
Before you go
The honest part. This is a working field, and the walk crosses private farmland – there are often cattle or sheep about, so close gates behind you and keep any dog on a lead. The lay-by is small and easy to shoot straight past at road speed, especially heading south, so slow down as you near Athgreany. The ground can be muddy and the grass long, and there are no facilities of any kind: just the stones, the tree and the view. Wear boots rather than trainers, and heed any notice at the gate.
Nearby
North along the N81, Blessington spreads along the shore of a reservoir that drowned a whole valley, with the great Palladian house at Russborough on its edge. East over the mountains lies the monastic valley of Glendalough, reached by the high mountain road through the Wicklow Gap – one of the finest short drives in the country on a clear day. The Piper’s Stones make a quick stop rather than a day out; twenty minutes on the hill is about right.
If you can, come late in the day. The low sun rakes across the field, throws the boulders into relief and picks out what is left of the carvings – and if the story is to be believed, that is when the piper strikes up again.