Cupmarked stone, Leighcloon, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
On the eastern bank of the Roaringwater River estuary in west Cork, there is a small carved stone that nobody can currently find.
That is, more or less, the entire situation. The stone is not lost in any dramatic sense; it simply ceased to be where it once was, and no subsequent record has established where it went.
Cupmarks are among the most widespread and least understood marks left by prehistoric people across Ireland and Britain. They are exactly what the name suggests: shallow, rounded depressions ground or pecked into the surface of a rock, with no agreed explanation for their purpose. The Leighcloon stone was modest in scale, measuring roughly 0.2 metres by 0.2 metres, not much larger than a thick hardback book. One face carried a single cupmark of about 8 centimetres in diameter; the other had a double cupmark, the two hollows connected in what was described as a dumb-bell arrangement, the larger measuring around 5 centimetres across and the smaller around 3. It had been found in the ground beside a small house near the estuary, and the details were recorded through local information rather than any formal excavation. By the time the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork compiled its fifth volume in 2009, the stone's whereabouts were already listed as unknown.
