Standing stone, Baile Dhúlocha, Co. Galway

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Baile Dhúlocha, Co. Galway

On the south-western slope of Binn Shléibhe, known in English as Ben Levy, a lozenge-shaped boulder of conglomerate rock sits on a small upland plateau, looking out over Lough Corrib.

It is only a metre tall, modest by the standards of prehistoric standing stones, yet its proportions are deliberate: the two flat faces are oriented precisely to the north-west and south-east, and packing stones remain visible around its base, placed there by whoever first set it upright in the ground. The stone was not recorded until December 2014, when Colm Mac Diarmada came across it in an area of rough grazing and cut-away bogland, making it one of the more recently discovered examples of this monument type in County Galway.

The setting tells part of the story. From the plateau, the land opens outward in a wide arc, with panoramic views running from the east, sweeping south across Lough Corrib, and continuing around to the north-west. Whether or not that orientation was intentional, it places the stone in a landscape that was clearly known and used over a long period. Roughly 260 metres to the north-north-west lies a ring-barrow, a low circular earthwork of the kind typically associated with Bronze Age burial practice, consisting of a central mound enclosed by a ditch and outer bank. The two monuments may have no direct relationship, but their proximity on the same upland shelf suggests this plateau was not incidental ground. The bog that once surrounded the area has been cut away over time, leaving the stone sitting on a small residual mound, a consequence of the turf removal rather than any original feature of its construction. The area immediately around the base has also been poached, likely by grazing animals, though the packing stones that stabilised the boulder remain in place.

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