Standing stone, Slievemore, Co. Cork

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Slievemore, Co. Cork

On a south-facing slope of rough grazing on Slievemore in County Cork, a single rectangular standing stone rises just under two metres from the ground.

It is a thin slab, barely fourteen centimetres deep, oriented along a NNE-SSW axis, and it has almost certainly been standing there for several thousand years. What it marked, or why someone chose this particular slope, is no longer known.

Standing stones are among the most common yet least understood prehistoric monuments in Ireland. Erected roughly between 2000 and 500 BC, they appear singly and in groups across the landscape, and their purposes seem to have varied widely, from boundary markers and burial indicators to ritual focal points. This particular stone, measuring 1.78 metres tall and 1.09 metres wide, is notably flat and blade-like in profile, a form sometimes associated with Cork and Kerry. Its alignment along a NNE-SSW axis may or may not have been deliberate in any astronomical sense; without associated finds or excavation, such questions remain open. What can be said is that whoever erected it selected a slope with a southern aspect, perhaps for visibility, perhaps for reasons entirely lost to us.

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