Long Stone, Punchestown Great, Co. Kildare
Co. Kildare |
Stone Monuments
Standing seven metres tall in a field of good pasture in County Kildare, this granite pillar is one of the tallest standing stones in Ireland, yet it sits quietly in the landscape without much ceremony. The stone tapers as it rises, and the greater part of its bulk is visible above ground, though 1.2 metres of it disappears into a socket cut into the earth below. At roughly nine tonnes, it is not a thing that moves easily, which makes its history of having once fallen all the more striking.
At some point before the twentieth century, the stone had toppled towards the north-east. When work began to restore it in 1934, archaeologists took the opportunity to make detailed drawings and excavate the socket before re-erection. That excavation produced a significant find: a small cist at the south-west side of the base. A cist, in this context, is a stone-lined box burial, typically associated with Bronze Age funerary practice, and its presence near the base of the standing stone suggests a ritual or commemorative dimension to the monument's original purpose. The stone itself is granite, measuring just under a metre in length and 0.65 metres in width at the base, and it stands on slightly elevated ground, giving it a quiet dominance over the surrounding fields. It is designated a National Monument, carrying the number 305.