Standing stone, Dromasmole, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
Some archaeological sites are remarkable for what survives.
This one is remarkable for what does not. In the townland of Dromasmole in mid Cork, a standing stone once formed part of an unusual alignment, three stones set in an extended line running north-east for roughly 320 yards. That is a considerable distance for such an arrangement, and the north-easternmost of the three, standing around 45 inches in height, has since been removed entirely. No surface trace remains.
The stone was one of four recorded in the townland, all noted by P. J. Hartnett in 1939. What Hartnett described was not a tight cluster but a stretched-out formation, the kind of linear arrangement that archaeologists sometimes associate with prehistoric ritual or land-marking, though the precise purpose of such alignments remains debated. The grouping in Dromasmole appears to have been particularly extensive in scale, which makes the loss of even one component all the more significant in understanding whatever relationship the stones once held to one another and to the landscape around them.