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Slieve Croob () is a mountain with a height of in the middle of
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. It is the heart of a mountainous area known as the
Mourne Mountains
The Mourne Mountains ( ; ga, Beanna Boirche), also called the Mournes or Mountains of Mourne, are a granite mountain range in County Down in the south-east of Northern Ireland. They include the highest mountains in Northern Ireland, the high ...
River Lagan
The River Lagan (; Ulster Scots: ''Lagan Wattèr'') is a major river in Northern Ireland which runs 53.5 miles (86 km) from the Slieve Croob mountain in County Down to Belfast where it enters Belfast Lough, an inlet of the Irish Sea. The ...
. There is a small road to the summit, where there is an ancient burial
cairn
A cairn is a man-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the gd, càrn (plural ).
Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehis ...
and several transmitter stations with radio masts. It has wide views over all of County Down and further afield. The Dromara Hills also includes Slievenisky, Cratlieve, Slievegarran and Slievenaboley.
Slieve Croob may have been the mountain named ''Brí Erigi'' or ''Brí Airige'' in medieval writings.Slieve Croob at Place Names NI . The cairn on its summit is believed to be the remains of an ancient burial mound, possibly of a passage tomb like the one on Slieve Gullion. In the 19th century it was recorded to be around and in "conical height", with forty-two "pillar stones" or kerbstones around the edge. The cairn would have had a well-defined shape when it was built, but over time it has slipped and been damaged by visitors. Irish folklore holds that it is bad luck to damage such cairns. Some of its stones have been piled into smaller cairns on top of it, which led to the summit being nicknamed 'The Twelve Cairns'. Traditionally, people would gather on the summit at Lughnasadh where they would add a stone to one of the cairns. They would collect and eat bilberries and there would be folk music, dancing and games.
Local people still climb the mountain on the first Sunday in August (referred to as Cairn Sunday or Blaeberry Sunday), and carry a stone up the mountain to help bury the twelve Kings, who are said to be buried at the top.
Legannany Dolmen sits on the southern slopes of Slieve Croob near the village of Leitrim.
Gallery
File:Slieve Croob near Dromara (3) - geograph.org.uk - 1739100.jpg, Slieve Croob from the west, covered with patches of snow
File:The top of Slieve Croob - geograph.org.uk - 1406296.jpg, The summit, looking towards the Mournes
File:Slieve Croob emergency service towers - geograph.org.uk - 223417.jpg, Communications towers on Slieve Croob