The Mourne Mountains (Irish: Beanna Boirche), also called the Mournes or Mountains of Mourne, are a granite mountain range in County Down in the southeast of Northern Ireland. They include the highest mountains in Northern Ireland, the highest of which is Slieve Donard at 850 m (ca. 2,789 ft). The Mournes are designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and it has been proposed to make the area Northern Ireland's first national park. The area is partly owned by the National Trust and sees many visitors every year. The Mourne Wall crosses fifteen of the summits and was built to enclose the catchment basin of the Silent Valley and Ben Crom reservoirs.

The name 'Mourne' is derived from the name of a Gaelic clan or sept called the Múghdhorna. The common Irish name for the mountains, na Beanna Boirche, may mean "the peaks of the peak district" or "peaks of Boirche" (a mythical king and cowherd); it was historically anglicised as 'Bennyborfy'.

Some of the mountains have names beginning with "Slieve", such as Slieve Donard, Slieve Lamagan and Slieve Muck, which is derived from the Irish word sliabh, meaning "mountain". There are also a number of curious names: Pigeon Rock; Buzzard's Roost; Brandy Pad; the Cock and Hen; Percy Bysshe; the Devil's Coach Road; and Pollaphuca (from poll meaning "hole"] and púca meaning "ghost or spirit").

On clear days, the Mourne Mountains can be seen from the Isle of Man and Dublin.

The mountains are dominated by five Palaeocene granite intrusions. Four of these are miarolitic, the cavities containing well-crystallized, though generally small, examples of smoky quartz, feldspar and mica. Accessories include topaz and beryl which have long been coveted by collectors. Old-time finger-size aquamarine crystals labelled "Mournes", and devoid of matrix, feature in many collections, but often lack precise locality information. They are also suspiciously similar to those from Adun-Cholon, Siberia, which was the main source when these "Mournes" examples first appeared in the 1820s. Despite extensive quarrying, and the popularity of the range with walkers (and mineral collectors), nothing similar has been found in modern times. Caution must accompany these old-time specimens.

Geochronology

Mineralization age: Paleogene : 58.1 ± 1.6 Ma to 53.6 ± 0.8 Ma

Important note: This table is based only on rock and mineral ages recorded on mindat.org for this locality and is not necessarily a complete representation of the geochronology, but does give an indication of possible mineralization events relevant to this locality. As more age information is added this table may expand in the future. A break in the table simply indicates a lack of data entered here, not necessarily a break in the geologic sequence. Grey background entries are from different, related, localities.

Geologic Time				Rocks, Minerals and Events
Phanerozoic
	Cenozoic
		Paleogene
			Eocene	ⓘ Granite (youngest age) 53.6 ± 0.8 Ma ⓘ Hornfels (youngest age) 53.6 ± 0.8 Ma ⓘ Hornfels (oldest age) 55.0 ± 0.8 Ma
			Paleocene	ⓘ Granite (oldest age) 58.1 ± 1.6 Ma

Fossils

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Other Databases

Wikipedia:	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mourne_Mountains
Wikidata ID:	Q1478931

Localities in this Region

Other Regions, Features and Areas that Intersect

References