Standing stone, Bawnacouma, Co. Limerick

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Bawnacouma, Co. Limerick

Most standing stones occupy commanding ground, placed by their builders where they could be seen from a distance or where they commanded a view across the landscape.

The example at Bawnacouma, in County Limerick, does neither. It stands in level, waterlogged pasture with poor sightlines in every direction, which raises the obvious question of what, exactly, it was meant to do or be seen by.

The stone was surveyed by the Archaeological Survey of Ireland in 2000 and recorded as a roughly diamond-shaped upright, standing 1.2 metres tall, with its long axis running NNW to SSE. The rock appears to be a conglomerate, a sedimentary type formed from compressed fragments of older stone bound together over geological time, and whoever erected it took some care with the installation: packing stones are visible at the base, wedged in to stabilise the upright. About 125 metres to the north-northeast lies a recorded enclosure, one of the circular or sub-circular earthwork boundaries that occur widely across Irish farmland and frequently have early medieval or prehistoric associations, though the relationship between the two features at Bawnacouma is not documented. Whether the stone predates the enclosure, relates to it, or simply ended up in its vicinity by coincidence is not something the current record resolves.

The stone is visible on a Google Earth orthoimage from June 2018, which gives a reasonable sense of its position within the field before any visit. The wet pasture setting means the ground underfoot is likely to be soft for much of the year, so a visit in drier summer months is practical. There are no formal access arrangements noted, so the usual courtesies around farmland apply. The stone is modest in scale and easy to miss against the flat surroundings; at 1.2 metres it barely clears an average fieldgate. What rewards attention is not the drama of the thing but the oddness of its placement, sitting quietly in ground that offers it, and anyone standing beside it, almost nothing in the way of prospect.

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Pete F
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