Standing stone, Curraheen, Co. Tipperary

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Curraheen, Co. Tipperary

What looks at first like two separate stones turns out to be one, cracked so completely down its length that it has become a pair.

The standing stone at Curraheen, in County Tipperary, is a single sandstone monolith that has fractured vertically from top to base, splitting into a larger northward-leaning slab and a shorter companion to the south. The gap between them, about a third of a metre wide, has been quietly filled over time with loose stone from field clearance, giving the monument an improvised, patched quality that only adds to its strangeness. The field where it stands is known locally as Parc na clocha, Irish for the field of the stones.

The stone was set on flat ground, rectangular in plan and orientated east to west, with Carrigadoon Hill rising to the south and open views stretching east and west across the landscape. At its maximum, the original monolith measured roughly a metre wide and nearly two metres tall. Both surviving sections are cracked not just at the base but along their full lengths, suggesting the fracture runs deep through the geology of the stone itself. A substantial packing stone at the base of the northern side, nearly a metre long and weighing considerably, was presumably placed there to stabilise the leaning larger fragment. Standing stones of this kind are prehistoric in origin, erected as markers, boundaries, or ceremonial monuments, though the precise purpose at any individual site is rarely recoverable. What survives here is a monument in slow, arrested collapse, held in place by whatever combination of the original setting, the packing stone, and accumulated field debris has kept it upright.

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