Bullaun stone (present location), Maudlintown, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Holy Sites & Wells
At the eastern edge of an enlarged field in Maudlintown, County Wexford, sits a granite stone that was, until around 1982, somewhere else.
That short, unrecorded journey is itself part of what makes it worth knowing about. The stone carries a single rounded basin carved or worn into its upper surface, roughly half a metre across and a third of a metre deep, making it a bullaun stone, a type of ancient carved rock found at early Christian and prehistoric sites across Ireland, often associated with holy wells, monastic enclosures, or ritual use. The purpose of individual bullauns is rarely settled; some were used for grinding, others appear to have had votive or curative significance, and many sit in ambiguous territory between the practical and the sacred.
This particular example is a substantial piece of granite, measuring about 1.36 metres in length and standing 0.38 metres high, with a width that varies between 0.57 and 1.24 metres. It was moved a short distance to its current position on the eastern side of the field circa 1982, most likely as a consequence of agricultural reorganisation when the field was enlarged. That kind of displacement is not uncommon for bullaun stones across Ireland, which have been shifted by farmers, road builders, and well-meaning improvers over the centuries, sometimes ending up incorporated into walls or left in corners far from their original context. What the original setting here looked like, or what surrounded the stone before it was moved, is not recorded.