Bullaun stone, Templenoe, Co. Tipperary

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Holy Sites & Wells

Bullaun stone, Templenoe, Co. Tipperary

In the north-west corner of a graveyard in Templenoe, County Tipperary, a small limestone slab sits cemented onto a modern stone pedestal, raised about seventy centimetres off the ground as though someone felt it deserved a plinth.

The stone itself is not large, roughly sixty-five centimetres across, sub-oval in shape, and worn by weathering into natural cleavage planes. What draws attention is the hollow worn into its upper surface, slightly off-centre toward the north-west, a shallow depression just over six centimetres deep that retains a little standing water almost permanently. This is a bullaun stone, a type of early medieval or prehistoric carved rock found widely across Ireland, typically associated with ecclesiastical sites, holy wells, or burial grounds. The cup-shaped hollows were ground or pecked into the stone, and the water that collects in them has long been considered to have curative or protective properties.

The stone came to light at Templenoe during a graveyard clean-up, which is a fairly common circumstance for bullaun discoveries. Many such stones spent centuries face-down in the earth or built into walls, overlooked or deliberately buried as their original religious significance faded. Once identified, this one was set on its pedestal close to the roadside entrance, about three metres into the graveyard, where it now sits in a slightly incongruous but well-intentioned state of preservation. The limestone it is made from is local material, and the natural weathering of its surface gives it a texture that makes the artificial hollow all the more legible by contrast.

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