Standing stone, Ardmoneel, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Stone Monuments
On the Ordnance Survey maps of this part of the Iveragh Peninsula, a small bracket of words marks a spot in the pastureland near Farrantoreen Lough: "Gallaun (site of)".
A gallaun is the Irish term for a standing stone, one of those solitary upright slabs of uncertain age and purpose that punctuate the Irish countryside, often prehistoric in origin. The parenthetical "site of" is the quietly deflating part. Nothing is there. No stone, no stump, no socket in the earth. The map records an absence.
What once stood here was located roughly 500 metres south-east of Farrantoreen Lough, in level pastureland in Ardmoneel, County Kerry. A survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996, catalogued it among the archaeological monuments of south Kerry, but even at that point no visible trace survived. The stone had already gone, removed at some unknown date, leaving only the cartographic memory of its existence and the bare coordinates of where it once broke the skyline.