Standing stone, Cordal, Co. Kerry

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Cordal, Co. Kerry

A sandstone block rising out of a waterlogged depression in mountainous bog is not the most obvious thing to seek out, yet this standing stone at Cordal in County Kerry has a quiet presence that rewards some attention.

Aligned east to west, it stands 1.45 metres above the surrounding ground level, measuring 95 centimetres across its breadth and 45 centimetres in width, its roughly rectangular section giving it a solid, planted quality. When O'Hare visited and recorded it in 1996, the base was submerged to a height of 40 centimetres, hidden beneath bogwater pooled in the shallow depression in which the stone sits. The immediate area is conspicuously bare of other stone, which makes its solitary presence all the more pronounced.

Standing stones are among the most common prehistoric monuments in Ireland, yet they remain among the least understood. Their purposes are debated, with theories ranging from territorial markers to astronomical alignments to memorials for the dead, and the east-west orientation of this one at Cordal is the kind of detail that keeps those conversations alive without resolving them. What O'Hare's 1996 description makes clear is the deliberateness of its position: set on a break in a west-facing slope of mountainous bog, the stone looks out over a low-lying plain stretching to the north and northwest. The choice of that vantage point, in a landscape otherwise devoid of surface stone, suggests the site was selected with some care, whatever the original intention.

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Pete F
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