The story of Ballykeel Dolmen
Ballykeel Dolmen was raised by Neolithic farming communities sometime between 4000 and 2500 BC, making it close to 5,000 years old. It belongs to a group known as tripod portal tombs, where a single great capstone is balanced on just three uprights rather than the more usual arrangement. The chamber beneath is roughly octagonal, and the whole monument stood at the southern, higher end of a long burial cairn.
The cairn originally measured around 30 by 10 metres, with a stone-lined grave, or cist, set into its northern end. Over the centuries most of that mound was robbed away or eroded, leaving the dolmen exposed and the two kerb lines that still mark the cairn's edges. Local tradition gave the tomb the name 'Hag's Chair', one of many such names attached to dolmens across Ireland.
The site was excavated in 1963. Archaeologists found the cist at the northern end, hundreds of sherds of Neolithic pottery including decorated bowls, a javelin head and flint flakes, with phosphate traces hinting at burials long since gone. The capstone, which had slipped from its supports, was carefully re-set during the same campaign so the monument could stand as it does today.
Ballykeel is now a State Care Historic Monument protected by the Department for Communities. It sits within the Ring of Gullion at the foot of Slieve Gullion, an area dense with cairns, tombs and the famous Slieve Gullion summit passage tomb, making it part of one of the most significant prehistoric concentrations on the island.