This site is something of a disappointment. So much has been said about its importance in the overall scheme of megalithic Ireland and yet there is sadly so little to see. Sometimes even the most minimalist remains can project a certain beauty, but Knockroe fails to deliver in a big way.

The main reason for this failure is down to the 4 foot high barbed wire fence and the archaeological detritus that still remains there. Each stone sits on its own piece of black bin bag and many stripey marker sticks poke out of the grass.

This place gains its importance from the fact that it is or was a decorated passage tomb. None of the experts imagined that one could be so far south. It does make one ask how many others were destroyed to make roads!

From outside the fence it is not possible to see any of the faint carvings that remain and the propped up orthostats give no real idea of the original form of this once mighty place.

Like Knowth it has two passages, one aligned with the Winter Solstice sunrise and one with Summer Solstice sunset. This truly was the Newgrange of the south. It will be interesting to see what happens to it once the archaeologists have finished poking around here.

My visit here today has changed my opinion of the site. It is still a mess, but I actually went into the enclosure and looked around the site properly this time and I was soon able to forget about the plastic sheeting and red and white striped poles everywhere - at least most of the time.

The smaller passage is very similar to many found at Loughcrew having side chambers divided by othostats that protrude into the main chamber which is basically a widening of the passage. There is a sill stone at the current entrance, but an almost cubic stone stands 2m or so in front of this on the line of the kerb, which could indicate that the passage was once much longer. This structure faces SE.

The stones forming the kerb are immense and give the cairn an oval(ish) outline. The smaller passage is at one end of this. Only one kerb stone seems to have any real ornamentation on it and this is quite extreme in quantity. In the dying sun I was able to see that the whole surface is covered in wiggly lines and zig-zags. This is probably of particular importance, because this stone faces towards the river below.

Quartz scatters litter the floor outside the smaller passage and around the perimeter to this heavily decorated stone. They also occur on the northwest side of the cairn.

The larger passage seems to have been added later. The entrance is set back from the outline of the kerb and looks like a court tomb being flanked by large upright orthostats. This passage bears a lot of internal passage tomb art consisting of spirals and concentric circles. I was very much reminded of some of the carvings at Knowth (County Meath).

One of the back stones is covered in arcs and swirls and looks as good as any stone from Knowth or Gavrinis in France. One of the stones forming the passage has a field of well defined cup marks near to its base. In fact most of the remaining ornament is at the bases of the orthostats. Presumably these were buried until the recent excavations.

The most pleasurable thing about this trip was seeing the sun set into the larger passage. It was probably originally aligned to the mid winter sunset, but I think the collapsing sides mean that the display will no longer happen. Now you probably need to be here a couple of weeks or so either side of this date as I was today.

One thing I did notice relates to the kerb and I have not seen this commented upon elsewhere. There are two stones that are different types to the rest of the kerb. One is on the south side of the cairn and the other on the north side. A straight line between these two stones passes straight through the central point of the smaller chamber. If the line is extened south it heads towards the hill at the foot of which stands the high crosses at Ahenny (County Tipperary) - possibly one of the earliest Christian sites in Ireland.

Another alignment of note is that a line drawn through the centres of the two tombs, when extended westwards passes through Slievennmon, a very significant mountain in the area.

There is no doubt that this location was chosen for very specific reasons based upon the landscape around it.