Bullaun stone, Ballynaberny, Co. Wexford

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Holy Sites & Wells

Bullaun stone, Ballynaberny, Co. Wexford

At the western edge of a circular graveyard in Ballynaberny, there was once a bullaun stone that nobody can now find.

Bullauns are boulders, often of considerable age, in which one or more cup-shaped depressions have been ground or worn into the surface; they are associated across Ireland with early ecclesiastical sites and, in folk tradition, with healing and cursing alike. This particular example, measuring roughly 1.2 metres by 0.8 metres and carrying two basins, was recorded as sitting directly in the ground just outside the graveyard boundary. When a surveyor returned to verify it in March 2012, it was gone.

The graveyard itself belongs to the site of the ancient parish church of Kilrush, set in a shallow valley that runs roughly northeast to southwest, with a stream passing about thirty metres to the northwest. The enclosure is defined by a stone-faced earthen bank and is notably circular in plan, a form that archaeologists generally associate with early medieval ecclesiastical foundations in Ireland, predating the more rectilinear layouts introduced under later church organisation. The bullaun would have been a significant feature of such a site, the kind of object that tends to accumulate local ritual meaning over centuries. Whether it was moved, buried more deeply by ground disturbance, or simply overlooked during the 2012 visit is unrecorded.

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Pete F
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