Standing stone, Corrabally, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
There is something quietly paradoxical about a standing stone that no longer stands.
On a south-facing slope in the townland of Corrabally in West Cork, Ordnance Survey maps mark what should be one of the more elemental monuments in the Irish landscape, a single upright stone planted in the earth, probably in prehistoric times, its original purpose unrecorded and now perhaps unknowable. Standing stones of this kind appear across Ireland in considerable numbers, and their functions have been variously interpreted as boundary markers, memorial stones, or components of ritual landscapes. This particular example, however, presents the visitor with something more ambiguous: the cartographic ghost of a monument, recorded on maps and in archaeological inventories, but with no visible surface trace remaining in the pasture where it was once noted to stand.