Bullaun stone, Loughkent, Co. Tipperary

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Holy Sites & Wells

Bullaun stone, Loughkent, Co. Tipperary

At the southern entrance to a graveyard in Loughkent, Co. Tipperary, a split boulder sits embedded in the churchyard wall, its upper surface worn into a shallow circular hollow.

This is a bullaun stone, a type of ancient carved or naturally formed rock that bears one or more cup-shaped depressions, found at early Christian and medieval sites across Ireland. Their precise original purpose remains debated, but they are often associated with ritual use, and water collecting in the hollows was traditionally held to have curative or sacred properties.

This particular bullaun is a conglomerate boulder, roughly 0.48 metres across and 0.33 metres wide, which has been split vertically at some point in its history. The circular hollow on its upper surface measures around 0.21 metres in diameter and reaches a depth of just over seven centimetres. The stone is incorporated into the southern side of the western wall of the graveyard, which itself encloses the remains of a medieval church. Whoever set the wall here made a deliberate accommodation for the stone: a small niche was cut into the masonry directly above the hollow, a detail that suggests the stone was considered worth preserving and perhaps still accorded some significance when the wall was built or repaired.

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