Ballynoe Stone circle 4 km S of Downpatrick, a very large circle of over 50 stones enclosing a space about 35 meters across. It was modeled on the circle at Swinside in Cumbria which is at exactly the same latitude.

The text below is copied from the information provided by the DOE on the site.

The most obvious feature of this monument is the circle of standing stones. This circle is over 33 Metes in diameter and some of the stones are over 2 metes high. It may originally have been surrounded by a ditch, and a pair of stones just outside the western edge could mark an entrance.

This complex monument was excavated in the late 1930's but is still hard to understand. it seems to have been built and used over a considerable period of time. We are still not sure which parts were built first and which were added later.

The excavations focused on the oval, stone edged earth mound inside the circle. It had been built over an earlier stone cairn (a man made pile of stones) and a number of upright oval boulders which had been set around it.

The burnt bones of an adult male were discovered at the eastern end of the cairn in a small stone grave called a cist. A more complex stone feature, divided into three compartments, was discovered at the opposite end and this contained the burnt remains of two possibly, female, adults.

Intriguingly, several small hollows containing cremated bones and pieces of prehistoric pottery were discovered in the area between the mound and the stone circle.

The few pottery fragments which survive from the site are quite similar to the distinctively 'Carrowkeel Ware' often found in passage tombs. this suggests that at least part of the monument dated from the Neolithic period. One piece of pottery found here has been compared to fragments from the equally unusual site at Millen Bay near Portaferry which has a similar range of puzzling features.

The presence of cremation burials and stone cist's shows that the site was at least partly used for burial, probably in the succeeding Early Bronze Age.