Standing stone, Highpark, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Highpark, Co. Limerick

What stands on the elevated grassland of Knockfleming in County Limerick was once, in all likelihood, not alone.

A single large conglomerate boulder now rises 2.7 metres from the hilltop, its long axis oriented NNE-SSW, and a faint scarp in the ground around it hints at what used to encircle it: an embanked stone circle, or possibly a hilltop enclosure, whose component stones have long since vanished. The local name for the area, Knockfleming, appears in no great fanfare on the landscape, and the stone itself was noted on the revised 1923 Ordnance Survey six-inch map simply as 'Leagaun', an Irish term for a flagstone or flat slab. The panoramic views from this elevated position sweep from west through north to east, which may or may not be coincidental to wherever the original monument builders chose to place it.

The fullest early description comes from Fitzgerald, writing in 1826, who recorded a 'stone circle near High Park, the residence of Joseph Gabbett, Esq., where a number of stones are to be seen, some lying in confusion, others in circles or direct lines.' He noted that all the stones were rounded, and that one large detached stone stood erect, measuring nine feet in height, nearly the same in breadth, and four feet thick on one side. By the end of the nineteenth century, the antiquarian Lynch was already treating the site as a ruin in progress, suggesting in 1896 that the surviving upright was the large central stone of the original circle and that the surrounding stones had been removed many years before. Writing again between 1911 and 1913, Lynch was more precise, estimating the removal had taken place around 1850. A stone circle, in this context, would have been a prehistoric ceremonial monument, typically Bronze Age, in which upright stones were arranged in a ring, sometimes around a central feature. What remains today measures between 1.2 and 2.5 metres wide and 0.8 to 1.15 metres thick, an irregular boulder that carries its considerable age with no particular ceremony.

The stone sits on elevated grassland, and a hilltop ringfort, a type of enclosed circular settlement common in early medieval Ireland, is visible 440 metres to the SSE. Further standing stones lie in fields roughly 290 metres to the east, suggesting this part of County Limerick was once far more densely marked with prehistoric monuments than the present landscape implies. High Park House, associated with the Gabbett family who owned the land in the early nineteenth century, lies 1.3 kilometres to the NNE. The site is on open farmland, so access depends on landowner goodwill, and the low scarp that hints at the former enclosure is subtle enough that it rewards a slow circuit of the stone rather than a quick glance from a distance.

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