Anomalous stone group, Annagannihy, Co. Cork

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Stone Monuments

Anomalous stone group, Annagannihy, Co. Cork

In a field near Annagannihy in mid-Cork, there is, or once was, a circle of seven standing stones roughly thirty-three feet across.

The qualification matters, because when archaeologists went looking for it in 1983, they could not find it. The stones may have been removed, buried, or simply swallowed by changed land use in the decades since they were first recorded. What remains is the description: a modest arrangement, catalogued and then lost, sitting somewhere to the south of a companion monument of the same type on the same townland.

The earliest known record comes from a 1916 publication by Condon, who noted the diameter and stone count with enough confidence to suggest the group was visible and reasonably intact at that time. The site belongs to a category sometimes labelled "anomalous stone group", a term used when a circular arrangement of standing stones does not fit neatly into the better-known prehistoric monument types such as stone circles or alignments, and where the function or date remains unclear. Cork has a notable concentration of prehistoric stone monuments, and the pairing of two such groups within twenty yards of each other in Annagannihy suggests the area may once have held some local significance, though what kind is now impossible to say with any certainty. By the time the county's archaeological inventory was compiled in the 1990s, the site could only be described through Condon's earlier account, with a note that it had not been relocated on the ground.

There is no practical visitor information to offer here, which is itself part of the story. The monument may no longer exist in any visible form. Its companion group, recorded separately, at least has a confirmed map reference, but this one remains unverified on the landscape, a set of coordinates pointing to an absence.

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Pete F
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