Standing stone, Ballincurra, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Ballincurra, Co. Tipperary

Between the first and second editions of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, this two-metre limestone standing stone quietly vanished from the official record.

It appears on the earlier survey, but by the 1904 revision it had been dropped entirely, which is the kind of cartographic mystery that makes a place quietly interesting. The stone itself is still there, however, set in a small hollow in a flat valley in North Tipperary, with the Nenagh River running about thirty metres to the north and a second stream, now largely driven underground, about a hundred metres to the south.

The stone is triangular in cross-section, roughly two metres tall and just over a third of a metre wide at its broadest point, tapering as it rises from east to west so that it comes to a distinct point at its western end. It is aligned along an east-west axis, a deliberate orientation that standing stones, which are upright monoliths erected during the prehistoric period and associated with a range of ritual or territorial functions, frequently share. It is composed of local limestone and was set directly into the ground without the packing-stones that are commonly found bracing monuments of this kind, though grassy tufts have grown up around the base on the northern side. Someone, at some point in the modern era, incised the initials RC and RM into the surface, small signatures added to a stone that had already been standing for an unknowable length of time.

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Pete F
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