Standing stone, Boolahallagh, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Stone Monuments
On a steep north-facing slope in the Tipperary uplands, a single red sandstone block rises less than a metre out of the rough pasture, easy to walk past and easier still to dismiss.
It is not tall, not dramatic, and not accompanied by any obvious ceremonial landscape. What makes it worth pausing over is precisely its quiet particularity: the careful placement, the deliberate orientation, and the subtle evidence that someone, at some point long ago, went to some trouble to keep it upright.
The stone is roughly rectangular in plan, measuring 0.62 metres by 0.3 metres at the base and standing 0.94 metres high, with a notably flat top. It is orientated on a northeast to southwest axis, and its two principal faces, on the southeast and northwest sides, are both flat, though the northwest face has fractured over time through weathering. Standing stones like this one are among the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland, yet also among the least understood; their functions are debated, with suggested purposes ranging from boundary markers and route indicators to ritual or commemorative use. At Boolahallagh, a large slab of bedrock is exposed at the foot of the northwest face, and several smaller stones around the base on the southwest and northwest sides may be original packing stones, placed to stabilise the upright when it was first erected. A stream runs roughly north to south about 80 metres to the east, and the site commands extensive views northward and westward across the upland terrain, though the ground to the east and south limits the outlook in those directions. Whether any of these features were intentional considerations for whoever chose this spot is, at this remove, impossible to say.