Graves of the Leinster Men, Coolbaun, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Stone Monuments

Graves of the Leinster Men, Coolbaun, Co. Tipperary

On the north-western slope of Tountinna Hill in the Arra Mountains, a scatter of upright stones protrudes from the hillside in a formation that has puzzled antiquarians for well over a century.

The stones, known locally as the Graves of the Leinster Men, are not a tidy monument but rather a confused and weathered arrangement of orthostats, the term used for the upright slabs that form the structural elements of prehistoric stone settings. What they collectively suggest, however, is deliberate: the numerous stones appear to define a roughly rectangular area measuring approximately 15 metres by 23 metres, with a single dominant orthostat standing some 1.2 metres high in the north-eastern sector and a row of lower slabs to the south. From the hillside, Lough Derg is visible to the north-west, which may or may not have been incidental to whoever placed these stones here.

The antiquarian T. J. Westropp, writing in 1911 to 1912, left one of the earliest recorded descriptions of the site. He noted a line of small slate slabs running some 42 feet in length, with the largest pillar reaching three and a half feet high. He also observed a low mound situated roughly 17 feet to the north of this chief pillar, and described what he called a sort of fenced avenue leading into the partially enclosed space between the pillar and the alignment of smaller stones. The name itself, the Graves of the Leinster Men, belongs to a wider tradition of naming ancient or otherwise inexplicable monuments after legendary battles, massacres, or the fallen of a distant province. Such names rarely reflect verifiable history, but they do reflect how communities have long made narrative sense of the silent and strange things left in the landscape.

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