Four poster, Cappaboy Beg, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Four poster, Cappaboy Beg, Co. Cork

On the bog-covered north-western slope of the Owvane river valley in west Cork, four prehistoric standing stones are arranged in a formation that immediately resists easy description.

This is a "four poster", a relatively rare monument type in Ireland in which four uprights are set at the corners of a rough quadrilateral rather than in a row or a circle. What makes this particular example quietly odd is the disproportion between its stones. The tallest, a stone 2.8 metres high standing towards the south-west, dwarfs its companions considerably; the two stones to the south-east reach only around 0.95 metres. Together the four form a squat trapezium, asymmetrical and low to the ground except for that one striking outlier.

The dimensions were recorded by archaeologist Seán Ó Nualláin, whose 1984 survey of Cork stone rows and related monuments remains a foundational reference for this monument type in the south of Ireland. The north-east stone is a massive block, 1.1 metres long and 1.3 metres high, while the tallest stone lies 2.5 metres to its south-west. The monument does not stand alone in the landscape. A single standing stone lies roughly 23 metres to the south-east, a pair of standing stones sits about 100 metres to the west-south-west, and a radial-stone enclosure, a circular arrangement in which stones radiate outward from a central point, lies approximately 200 metres to the east-north-east. This clustering of monument types across a relatively compact area of boggy valley-side suggests the location held sustained ceremonial or territorial significance during the Bronze Age, though precisely what drew prehistoric communities to this particular bend of the Owvane is not recorded.

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