Cupmarked stone (present location), Ummeraboy, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
In a field in Ummeraboy, in North Cork, a prehistoric stone lies face-down against a fence, its most significant feature hidden from view.
The stone is said to bear cupmarks on one side, those shallow, circular depressions ground into rock by people in the Bronze Age or earlier, whose precise purpose remains debated but whose presence on standing stones is well documented across Ireland. Whether or not those marks are still legible, nobody can currently say, because the exposed surface shows nothing.
The stone was one of a pair of standing stones, its companion recorded separately. Around 1981, it was removed from its original position and left dumped against a field boundary, the kind of casual displacement that has claimed many such monuments over the decades, usually during land clearance or agricultural improvement. The original site where the pair stood is logged separately, but the stone itself has not been returned to it. What makes this particular case quietly melancholy is the condition of the record: local knowledge holds that the cupmarks exist, but the stone now rests with that surface pressed to the ground, inaccessible and unverifiable.