Ogham stone (present location), Baile An Tsagairt, Co. Kerry

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Stone Monuments

Ogham stone (present location), Baile An Tsagairt, Co. Kerry

On a low but prominent hillock between Dingle Harbour and Trabeg, nine ancient inscribed stones stand arranged in a circle within a circular earthen enclosure, a setting that looks almost ceremonial but is in fact a modern convenience.

The stones were gathered from various spots in the surrounding area and brought together for safekeeping, so what appears to be a cohesive monument is really a kind of open-air collection, assembled rather than found.

Ogham is an early medieval script, most commonly carved along the edges of standing stones, in which sequences of notches and scores represent letters of the alphabet. One of the nine stones at this site, a boulder roughly 0.9 metres long, carries the inscription SUVALLOS MAQ(QI) DUCOVAROS, a formula typical of the period, recording a person's name alongside their father's: something like "Suvallos, son of Ducovaros". Part of the inscription has been lost to damage, specifically the last two scores of the Q and the first four of the I of MAQQI, though earlier accounts confirm those strokes were once there. The enclosure itself, known as An Cheallúnach or An Lisín, sits beside the site of Ballintaggart church and an old burial ground, layering early Christian associations over what may be older commemorative ground. The stone has been recorded as part of the "Ogham in 3D" project run by the School of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, which has produced detailed digital documentation of ogham inscriptions across Ireland.

The stones sit within the enclosure at the hillock's summit, and the grouping, however artificially arranged, gives a clear sense of how densely this corner of the Dingle Peninsula was once marked by inscribed memory. Nine stones from a single locality is a notable concentration, a reminder of how much early medieval activity passed through this stretch of Kerry coastline.

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