Anomalous stone group, Baslickane, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Stone Monuments

Anomalous stone group, Baslickane, Co. Kerry

Three standing stones rise from level pasture on the eastern shore of Ballinskelligs Bay in South Kerry, arranged not in a line, as is most common among Irish prehistoric monuments, but in a triangle.

That triangular disposition is what earns the site its classification as anomalous. Most multiple-stone arrangements on the Iveragh Peninsula follow a recognisable alignment, so something about this grouping resists easy categorisation, which is itself a kind of quiet provocation.

The stones vary considerably in scale and orientation. The largest, at the south-west of the triangle, stands 2.9 metres high and is oriented north-east to south-west; its neighbour, the smallest of the three at 1.4 metres, is set 2.1 metres to the east and follows the same orientation. The third stone, 2.75 metres to the north, is oriented north to south and measures 2.15 metres by 1.4 metres at its base, making it the broadest of the group. Around the base of each stone, packing stones protrude from the ground, the prehistoric equivalent of wedging a fence post, used to stabilise the uprights when they were first erected. Their survival is a useful reminder that these monuments were engineered with deliberate care, not simply hauled upright and abandoned to chance. Ordnance Survey maps mark the site as "Gallauns", an Anglicisation of the Irish word "gallán", meaning a standing stone, which is common enough as a placename across Munster but tells us nothing about why this particular cluster was arranged as it was. The site sits close to the edge of a low cliff, with the bay opening out to the west, a location that may have carried significance for whoever chose it, though what that significance was remains unresolved.

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