Standing stone, Dunmanus, Co. Cork

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Dunmanus, Co. Cork

On a north-facing slope in Dunmanus, on the Mizen Peninsula in west Cork, a tall irregular stone leans at a pronounced angle, propped against a second stone of similar size that lies mostly buried in the earth beside it.

The pairing gives the site an oddly companionable quality, as though one standing stone has simply grown tired and is resting on a neighbour.

The upright stone stands 2.2 metres high and is relatively thin, measuring 1.4 metres across and only 0.2 metres deep, giving it a slab-like profile. It is aligned on an ENE-WSW axis, a orientation shared by many prehistoric standing stones across Ireland and sometimes associated with solar or lunar events, though the specific purpose of any individual stone is rarely recoverable. Standing stones, which are found throughout Ireland and date broadly to the Bronze Age, were erected as single unworked or lightly shaped uprights; their original function may have been ceremonial, territorial, or funerary, and the honest answer is that no one knows for certain. This one sits in rough grazing land, the kind of marginal terrain that has kept it from disturbance over the millennia, even as the stone itself has shifted heavily to the north-north-west and come to rest against its half-buried companion.

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