Cloghstuckagh, Catherinestown, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Stone Monuments

Cloghstuckagh, Catherinestown, Co. Westmeath

At the top of a prominent hill in County Westmeath, a single large stone stands upright in a way that invites more questions than it answers.

The stone itself is conglomerate, a rock type formed from compressed pebbles and sediment, and it rises to 2.2 metres, measuring roughly 1.5 metres wide and 0.7 metres thick. Its shape is irregular but broadly rectangular in cross-section, and it has an odd quality of narrowing slightly in the middle before widening again at the top, giving it a subtly waisted profile. Two loose stones sit at its base. Whether these are the remains of packing used to keep it upright, or something else entirely, is not recorded.

The hill sits at 457 metres above ordnance datum, which is notable for the Irish midlands, and from the summit the land opens out in all directions. The stone does not stand in isolation in any historical sense. Within a few hundred metres lie two ringforts, the early medieval enclosures that dot the Irish countryside in their thousands, as well as the remains of Kilronan church and its associated graveyard, roughly 210 metres to the south-south-east. A further building stands about 130 metres to the south. Whether the standing stone predates this cluster of early medieval features, or was meaningful in relation to them, is the kind of question that landscape archaeology raises more often than it resolves. The name Cloghstuckagh contains the Irish word for stone, cloch, and the suffix suggests something projecting or pointed, which fits the physical reality closely enough.

The hill's elevation means the stone is visible from some distance in clear conditions, and the surrounding features, particularly the Kilronan church remains, make this a corner of Westmeath where several layers of history sit close together on the ground.

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