Standing stone, Knockdrislagh, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
A standing stone that twice escaped the notice of Ordnance Survey cartographers has a particular kind of anonymity about it.
The example at Knockdrislagh in North Cork was absent from both the 1842 and 1904 OS six-inch maps, meaning it passed through the great age of Irish landscape recording without being marked down at all. That omission does not diminish it. The stone is still there, set into pasture on a west-facing slope, quietly occupying ground it has held for a very long time.
The stone stands 1.63 metres tall and is rectangular in plan, measuring roughly 0.6 metres by 0.4 metres at its base, with its long axis oriented east to west. Standing stones of this kind are a feature of the Irish prehistoric landscape, erected most commonly during the Bronze Age, though the purposes behind individual examples remain difficult to pin down. Some appear to mark boundaries or routeways; others may have had a ritual or commemorative function. At Knockdrislagh, the west-facing slope gives the stone a particular orientation, one that would catch the afternoon and evening light, though whether that was intentional is impossible to say with certainty.