Historic Sites in County Tyrone

Three of the seven sites here sit within a short drive of Cookstown. Beaghmore, up on the edge of the Sperrins, came out from under the peat in the 1930s: seven stone circles, ten alignments and twelve cairns spread across open moor, in one of Northern Ireland’s darkest skies. Tullyhogue Fort is a quiet hill reached in a few minutes up a tarmac path, where O’Neill chieftains were inaugurated for five centuries until Mountjoy smashed the stone chair in 1602. Derryloran Old Church, a roofless shell of about 1622 on a rise above the Ballinderry River, is harder work; it isn’t marked on OS maps, so allow time to find it.

The rest are south, in the Clogher Valley. Knockmany passage grave crowns a conical hill above the valley, its thirteen carved stones locked inside a modern chamber, with access arranged in advance through the Historic Environment Division. Not far off, St Macartan’s at Augher stands on the site of an old ringfort and keeps four Clarke Studio windows of 1922, while St Patrick’s Chair and Well sits in the woods of Altadaven Glen.

Baronscourt, the Abercorn seat near Newtownstewart, is the outlier in the west and the one you cannot simply turn up to: entry is by appointment, on a guided tour. The open sites cost nothing and stay open year-round, though moorland and graveyard alike are better in dry weather.