Standing stone, Derry, Co. Kerry

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Derry, Co. Kerry

In the boglands of Derry townland on the Iveragh Peninsula, a standing stone leans heavily towards the south-west, largely consumed by overgrowth and absent from Ordnance Survey maps.

That last detail is telling. Standing stones, the solitary upright megaliths erected across Ireland from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age, are generally well catalogued; finding one that has slipped through the cartographic record entirely gives it a particular quality of obscurity.

The stone itself is substantial. It runs to 2.4 metres in overall length, is just over a metre wide and roughly 0.6 metres thick at the base, and is oriented on a north-east to south-west axis. It sits at the eastern end of a low ridge of rock outcrop, surrounded by a large expanse of bog, the kind of wet, insulating terrain that has preserved countless prehistoric features across Kerry while simultaneously swallowing them from view. The pronounced south-westerly lean suggests either deliberate original placement or centuries of gradual movement through soft ground, though the stone is described as regular in elevation, meaning its faces are reasonably even and consistent, which points to some degree of careful working or selection when it was first raised. Its immediate context, tucked against a natural ridge and half-buried in vegetation, makes it easy to miss entirely.

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Pete F
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