Standing stone, Cullaun, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Cullaun, Co. Tipperary

A triangular slab of red sandstone rising 1.69 metres out of a Tipperary pasture is unusual enough on its own terms, but the real strangeness lies in what surrounds it.

This single stone is one of sixteen that together form a circular arrangement within a field historically known locally as the 'racecourse field', and that grouping is itself part of one of the largest concentrations of standing stones recorded anywhere in Ireland. Across the two adjoining townlands of Timoney Hills and Cullaun, 221 stones were mapped in the mid-1930s, all of red sandstone or conglomerate, standing between roughly 0.9 and 1.8 metres tall. A later survey identified 245 in total, though 70 had already been removed by that point, along with five cairns that have since disappeared entirely.

When the Inspector of National Monuments surveyed the area between 1934 and 1936, he noted that the stones did not appear to follow any particular arrangement, with one clear exception: the stone circle in Cullaun, of which this upright is a surviving member. The stones were mapped individually, and this example was designated stone 9R. It is rectangular in section, orientated roughly north-northeast to south-southwest along its long axis, and sits within undulating pasture on the landscaped grounds of Timoney Park, a property associated with the Parker-Hutchinson estate. That last detail introduces a significant caveat: the estate setting has led some researchers to question whether these monuments are genuinely prehistoric or whether at least some were placed or repositioned during a period of landscape improvement. The question has not been definitively resolved, and it lends the whole complex an ambiguity that purely ancient sites rarely carry.

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