Standing stone, Com Dhíneol Thuaidh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Stone Monuments
On the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map, a standing stone is marked in the open mountain terrain of the Dingle Peninsula, labelled with the Irish word "Gallaun", a term used to denote a single upright prehistoric stone.
Today, nothing of it remains visible on the ground. The spot it once occupied sits at the meeting point of three townland boundaries: Glanfahan, Coumeenoole North, and Coumeenoole South, which is itself a curious detail. Standing stones were sometimes placed deliberately at territorial boundaries, serving as markers at the edges of land divisions that may have had meaning long before any map existed to record them.
The stone was documented in J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, the broader area encompassing the Dingle Peninsula, which catalogued a remarkable density of prehistoric and early medieval sites across what is now largely Irish-speaking countryside. By the time that survey was compiled, the gallaun at Coumeenoole North had already vanished. Whether it was removed, buried, or simply fell and was absorbed into the landscape is not recorded. What the OS map preserves is essentially a ghost: the cartographer's notation of something that was present when surveyors passed through in the nineteenth century and has since left no trace for anyone coming after them.