Cloughmore Stone, Rostrevor, July 2010 (04)

Cloughmore or Cloghmore (), known locally as "The Big Stone", is a huge granite boulder perched on a mountainside almost above the village of

Rostrevor Rostrevor () is a village and townland in County Down, Northern Ireland. It lies at the foot of Slieve Martin on the coast of Carlingford Lough, near Warrenpoint. The Kilbroney River flows through the village and Rostrevor Forest is nearby. ...

County Down County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 531,665. It borders County Antrim to the ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

. It sits on the slopes of Slieve Martin in

Kilbroney Park Kilbroney Park (Irish: Páirc Chill Bhrónai) is a park near Rostrevor in Northern Ireland. Formerly a country estate, it was visited by William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens and Seamus Heaney and may have been the inspiration for Narnia ...

, overlooking Rostrevor Forest,

Carlingford Lough Carlingford Lough (, Ulster Scots: ''Carlinford Loch'') is a glacial fjord or sea inlet in northeastern Ireland, forming part of the border between Northern Ireland to the north and the Republic of Ireland to the south. On its northern shore i ...

and the Cooley Peninsula. It is popular destination for visitors, and is part of a National Nature Reserve and Area of Special Scientific Interest. The granite boulder, which has a calculated mass of 50 tonnes, is a

glacial erratic A glacial erratic is glacially deposited rock differing from the type of rock native to the area in which it rests. Erratics, which take their name from the Latin word ' ("to wander"), are carried by glacial ice, often over distances of hundred ...

, thought to have been transported from

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

(from an island in Strathclyde bay) and deposited about 10,000 years ago by retreating ice during the last Ice Age. It sits on a relatively flat area of Silurian metasedimentary rock. Local legend has it that the stone was thrown from the Cooley Mountains, on the other side of Carlingford Lough, by the giant Fionn mac Cumhaill.

References

Geography of County Down Archaeological sites in County Down Glacial erratics Individual rocks {{NorthernIreland-archaeology-stub