Anomalous stone group, Cúil An Mhothair, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
Two sandstone boulders sit in a pasture on a south-facing slope in Cúil An Mhothair, Mid Cork, close enough together to suggest a relationship yet irregular enough to resist easy classification.
That designation, anomalous stone group, is itself a quiet admission that these stones do not fit the usual categories, neither a recognised megalithic tomb, nor an alignment, nor a straightforward outcrop. Something about their arrangement prompted somebody to record them, and then to leave the question open.
The larger of the two boulders stands roughly 0.9 metres high and measures approximately 1.2 metres by 0.9 metres, with its long axis running northeast to southwest. The second, slightly lower at 0.7 metres, is oriented differently, its long axis running northwest to southwest, and lies about 2.7 metres to the southwest of the first. Both are irregular sandstone, the kind of local material that makes it genuinely difficult to distinguish a deliberately placed stone from one that simply ended up where it is through geological chance. That difficulty is precisely why the anomalous label exists in Irish archaeological recording; it acknowledges that a feature is notable enough to document but that the evidence for human intent remains inconclusive.