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A.p. site - cropmarks of 6 ring ditches is a Bronze Age ceremonial landscape located near Armagh in Northern Ireland. The site comprises six ring ditches, which are circular monuments typically associated with burial or ritual practices during the Bronze Age, roughly 2300–700 BC. These ditches appear as cropmarks in aerial photography, revealing their presence through differential crop growth caused by the buried archaeological features beneath the soil surface.
The monument lies on bedrock of the Armagh Group, a Visean-period formation comprising limestone, argillaceous rocks and subordinate sandstone in interbedded sequences. This geological foundation would have influenced both the construction of the monuments and the formation of the soil environment in which they remain preserved today.
The site is protected as a scheduled monument under the Historic Environment Division of Northern Ireland, recorded under reference 5425. The grouping of six ring ditches suggests a significant ritual or funerary focus within the Bronze Age settlement pattern of the region, with the aerial cropmark evidence providing essential documentation of these subsurface features.
A.p. site - cropmarks of 6 ring ditches is a scheduled monument protected by Department for Communities NI under reference 5425. View the official record →
A.p. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by DfC Northern Ireland (NISMR) under reference 5425.
A.p. site - cropmarks of 6 ring ditches dates from the bronze age period, and is classified as a a.p. site. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
A.p. site - cropmarks of 6 ring ditches is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, legally protected by DfC Northern Ireland (NISMR) — the body responsible for designating and safeguarding heritage sites in Ni. The official designation reference is 5425.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Lisglynn. rath & souterrain (7.2 km), Rath (7.3 km), The doonan. mound (7.5 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 14 strands of A.p. site - cropmarks of 6 ring ditches's history, each drawn from the record and mapped to the exact spot:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
A.p. site - cropmarks of 6 ring ditches stands on Armagh Group, bedrock that formed in the Visean. The rock here is limestone, argillaceous rocks and subordinate sandstone, interbedded.