Stone row, Cloichear, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Stone Monuments

Stone row, Cloichear, Co. Kerry

On the northern edge of Clogher Strand on the Dingle Peninsula, there may once have been a prehistoric stone row, though the evidence for it has largely, perhaps entirely, vanished.

What makes this site unusual is not what survives but what almost certainly does not: the principal standing stone, an orthostat set close to the cliff-edge and orientated roughly NNE-SSW, is thought to have toppled into the sea at some point since it was recorded.

In 1976, researcher Lynch documented what appeared to be a stone alignment at this location, consisting of one upright orthostat and two prostrate slabs lying approximately six metres and nine and a half metres to the north-northeast. Stone rows, which are prehistoric arrangements of standing stones set in a roughly linear sequence, are found across the Dingle Peninsula and the broader Kerry landscape, though their precise purpose remains a matter of archaeological debate. This particular example was already fragile by the time it was recorded, positioned at the very lip of the cliff. By the time the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey was compiled by J. Cuppage in 1986, the stones were no longer visible, suggesting the deterioration was rapid or the alignment had already been misidentified. The possibility that the standing stone has since fallen into the Atlantic is recorded plainly, without resolution.

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