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St Adamnan's Footprints, known locally as the Giant's Track and Shane's Leap, is an inauguration stone located near Coleraine in County Londonderry. The monument rests on bedrock formed of Palaeogene extrusive mafic rocks—ancient lava and volcanic tuff laid down in the early Tertiary period, some 56 to 34 million years ago. These volcanic foundations give the site a distinctive geological character shaped by the region's dramatic geological past.
The stone served as an inauguration site of uncertain status within the ceremonial landscape of medieval Ulster. Inauguration stones held significant cultural and political importance as locations where chieftains and leaders were formally invested with authority, often marked by ritual practices including the symbolic treading of footprints carved into the rock. The multiple local names—St Adamnan's Footprints, the Giant's Track, and Shane's Leap—reflect layers of folklore and cultural memory that accumulated around the site over centuries.
The monument is now protected by the Historic Environment Division of the Northern Ireland Department for Communities under reference 12086. Today it remains a tangible link to medieval ceremonial practices and the oral traditions that sustained the cultural identity of the region's Gaelic-speaking communities into the early modern period.
St. adamnan's footprints, giant's track, shane's leap. inauguration stone is a scheduled monument protected by Department for Communities NI under reference 12086. View the official record →
St Adamnan's Footprints, known locally as the Giant's Track and Shane's Leap, is an inauguration stone located near Coleraine in County Londonderry. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by DfC Northern Ireland (NISMR) under reference 12086.
St. adamnan's footprints, giant's track, shane's leap. inauguration stone dates from the uncertain period, and is classified as a inauguration site. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
St. adamnan's footprints, giant's track, shane's leap. inauguration stone 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 12086.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Farrantemple fort. bivallate rath (1.6 km), Dwarf's grave, slaght averty. cairn (2.2 km), Rath (2.4 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 14 strands of St. adamnan's footprints, giant's track, shane's leap. inauguration stone'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.
St. adamnan's footprints, giant's track, shane's leap. inauguration stone stands on Unnamed Extrusive Rocks, Palaeogene, bedrock that formed in the Paleogene. The rock here is mafic lava and mafic tuff.