Standing stone, Balrothery, Co. Dublin
Co. Dublin |
Stone Monuments
On a patch of landscaped green in a modern housing estate in Balrothery Village, north County Dublin, a prehistoric standing stone sits surrounded by a flower bed.
That flower bed, added in 2010, now obscures the stone's base, which means a feature that has survived millennia of agricultural activity is today partly hidden by municipal planting. It is the kind of quiet irony that turns up repeatedly around ancient monuments absorbed into contemporary suburban life.
The stone itself is four-sided and orientated along a distinct east-west axis, measuring 1.5 metres in height, 1.25 metres in length, and 0.95 metres in width. Standing stones, raised during prehistory for purposes that remain debated, are scattered across Ireland, and many retain traces of the working landscapes that grew up around them over the centuries. This one is no exception. On the lower portion of its western face there are a series of plough marks, recorded by Healy in 1975, which speak to a long period during which the stone stood in open farmland and tillage came right up to its edges. When the Cloich Choirneal housing development was planned, archaeological test excavation and monitoring were carried out in advance of the build, recorded under licences 01E0255 and 01E0371, ensuring at least some investigation of the immediate ground before construction began.
The stone is located on the open green space within the Cloich Choirneal estate in Balrothery Village, which sits roughly two kilometres inland from the Dublin-Belfast road. It is accessible without any particular effort, being set in what is effectively a public amenity area, though it blends easily into its surroundings and could be passed without notice. The flower bed around the base means the full extent of the stone is not visible from ground level, so what a visitor sees is the upper portion rising from a ring of planting rather than the complete monument. The plough marks on the western face are the most historically legible detail, worth examining closely if the light is good.