Standing stone, Clogherane, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Stone Monuments
On the lower western slopes of Knockowen in south-west Kerry, a single rectangular standing stone rises just under one and a half metres from the ground.
It is not large, not celebrated, and not particularly easy to find, yet it has been standing in this pasture long enough to have outlasted almost everything else in the surrounding landscape. What gives it a quiet particularity is the precision of its orientation, aligned NNE to SSW, and the fact that it does not stand entirely alone.
The stone measures 0.79 metres by 0.46 metres at its base and reaches a height of 1.38 metres. Standing stones, which were erected throughout Ireland during the Bronze Age and occasionally later periods, are often solitary monuments whose original purpose remains uncertain; theories range from territorial markers to ceremonial focal points to astronomical alignments. Here, though, roughly six metres to the south-east, there is a cairn, a mound of stones that typically marks a burial. The proximity of the two monuments suggests this small corner of Knockowen may once have functioned as a modest ceremonial or funerary landscape, the standing stone and the cairn perhaps part of a related arrangement rather than coincidental neighbours.