Anomalous stone group, Caherkeegane, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
In boggy ground beside a stream in Caherkeegane, five flat sandstone slabs lie in a neat line, their long axis oriented roughly north-north-west to south-south-east.
They rest on low sandstone blocks, each slab sitting flush against its neighbour, the whole arrangement surrounded by a grass-covered spread of stones. What makes the site genuinely puzzling is that nobody has settled on what it actually is. The 1940 Ordnance Survey six-inch map labels it a cist, which is an ancient form of stone-lined burial box, typically built to contain a single interment. But the classification that stuck locally is altogether more colourful.
The site is recorded at University College Cork under the name "5 Kings Graves", a designation that carries obvious folklore weight without offering much archaeological certainty. The five slabs are subrectangular in shape, ranging from roughly 0.9 metres by 0.5 metres to 1.05 metres by 0.45 metres, which is broadly consistent with cist dimensions, though a row of five abutting slabs is an unusual arrangement for that monument type. Whether the structure was always configured this way, whether it has been disturbed or rearranged over time, or whether it belongs to some other category of monument entirely, remains unresolved. That ambiguity is precisely why it carries the label "anomalous stone group" rather than anything more definitive.