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Cookstown Cairn is a prehistoric burial monument situated in the townland of Cookstown in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. The cairn stands on bedrock composed of mafic igneous rock, part of an unnamed intrusion of Ordovician to Silurian age that formed during the Silurian period. This dense, dark stone would have been readily available to prehistoric builders working in the locality, providing suitable material for constructing the monument's stone superstructure.
The cairn represents a form of funerary architecture common across Ireland during the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods. Such monuments typically contained burial deposits or cremated remains, often associated with grave goods. The specific configuration and original height of this example cannot be determined without excavation, as many cairns have been reduced through stone robbing and agricultural clearance over millennia.
The monument is protected by the Historic Environment Division under reference 14433, recognising its archaeological significance as evidence of prehistoric settlement and ritual practice in the Cookstown area. The site's survival in the landscape contributes to understanding the distribution and character of early monumental construction across this region of Ulster.
Cairn is a scheduled monument protected by Department for Communities NI under reference 14433. View the official record →
Cookstown Cairn is a prehistoric burial monument situated in the townland of Cookstown in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by DfC Northern Ireland (NISMR) under reference 14433.
Cairn dates from the prehistoric period, and is classified as a cairn. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
Cairn 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 14433.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Cairn (0.2 km), Cairn & alignment (0.4 km), Bradley's cairn. round cairn with standing stones (0.7 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 14 strands of Cairn'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.
Cairn stands on Unnamed Igneous Intrusion, Ordovician To Silurian, bedrock that formed in the Silurian. The rock here is mafic igneous-rock.