Stone, Lisheenbrien, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Stone Monuments
At some point between the first and later editions of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of Tipperary, a standing stone in the townland of Lisheenbrien quietly disappeared from the official record.
Not physically, as it turns out, but cartographically. The stone is still there, upright and tapering towards its tip, with the packing stones that were wedged around its base still holding it in place after what may be a very considerable span of time. It simply stopped being marked.
Standing stones are among the most enigmatic of Irish field monuments. They occur across the country in a wide range of sizes and settings, and their purposes remain genuinely unclear, with theories ranging from ritual markers to boundary indicators to memorials. This particular example sits in upland ground close to a farmhouse in Lisheenbrien, and its first documented appearance is on the earliest Ordnance Survey six-inch mapping of the area, where it is noted plainly as "Stone". That the later editions omit it entirely is not necessarily sinister; surveyors revised and simplified their coverage over time, and smaller or more ambiguous features were sometimes left off subsequent printings. But the effect is that the stone existed officially, then did not, while the stone itself remained in the field throughout, packing stones and all.
