Stone row, Formaoil, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Stone Monuments
On a gently sloping field in Formaoil, two tall standing stones rise from pasture that no Ordnance Survey map has ever bothered to record.
They are the remnant of what was once a stone row, a prehistoric alignment of upright megaliths, and they survive in a landscape that opens northward across a wide expanse of bog toward Portmagee Channel and the long low silhouette of Valentia Island. The omission from official cartography is not unusual for sites like this in Kerry, but it does mean the stones exist in a kind of informal obscurity, known locally but largely absent from the record.
The row originally consisted of three stones, aligned on a north-south axis. At some point, one was removed by a farmer after an animal became trapped against it or beneath it. The precise original position of that third stone is now lost. What remains are two substantial uprights: the southern stone stands 1.65 metres high with a base measuring roughly 1.05 by 0.5 metres, while its companion, set 1.45 metres to the north, reaches 1.6 metres and measures 0.7 by 0.45 metres at its base. These dimensions were recorded by Seán Ó Nualláin in 1988, as part of his systematic work documenting stone rows across Ireland. Stone rows of this kind are found in some concentration on the Iveragh Peninsula and across south-west Munster more broadly, and while their exact prehistoric purpose remains debated, their consistent alignments suggest they were laid out with deliberate astronomical or ceremonial intent.
The story of the removed stone is a small, telling detail. It sits at the intersection of deep prehistory and everyday agricultural life, a moment when a monument that had stood for perhaps three or four thousand years became, practically speaking, a hazard in a field. The animal was freed, the stone was taken away, and whatever alignment it once completed is now a matter of inference rather than measurement.