In Irish, I have seen this hill referred to as ‘Cor tSamhaidh’, the Round Hill of the Sorrel. The sorrel in question is obviously the plant of that name, called ‘samhadh’ in Irish (‘Rumex acetosa’ in botany). It is the long-leaved common sorrel that often ends up in our salads. One would therefore expect an abundance of the plant here, if it did give its name to the hill, yet I have so far never found a specimen. Then again, I have never gone out avidly looking for one, either.
Leaving this botanical conundrum aside, the most notable feature on Sorrel is the megalithic cairn on its summit, which has a diameter of about 20m. (Enterprising modern hands have added a further small cairn to the original beneath.) In the photo, just to the left of the mound, can be seen in the distance the cluster of Seefin, Seefingan and Seahan, equally crowned with megaliths. These hills lie between 6 and 8kms away, across the valley of the Liffey.
There are other remnants of the past in the immediate vicinity, too, though they are difficult to find. On the broad saddle between Sorrel and Lugnagun there are, reportedly, traces of several Stone Age enclosures (detectable in aerial photography) and another cairn about 10m in diameter, but I have looked for them in vain in this very broken terrain. A little further on, inside the forest fence, there is a small megalithic tomb (marked, this time, on the OSI map), but now so hemmed in by forest that it is in danger of being totally engulfed (Coillte protecting our heritage!).
One thing our megalithic forebears did not see from the top of Sorrel is, of course, the 11 kilometre long Pollaphuca Reservoir to the west. Although we know today that there was, in fact, a lake there between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago, fed by meltwater from a glacier, it had long disappeared before the builders of the megaliths ever came upon the scene. The dam that forms the present lake, dating from 1940, has given us a view of the past that makes even Stone Age man a recent blow-in by comparison.
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