Standing stone, Fearann Dealúigh, Co. Kerry

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Fearann Dealúigh, Co. Kerry

What makes this standing stone on the Dingle Peninsula quietly odd is not the stone itself but its companion.

Beside it, abutting the south-western face of the main upright, a second much smaller stone has been set at a precise right angle, as though bracing or acknowledging the larger one. This pairing is easy to overlook, given that the main stone is only 1.2 metres tall and 1.32 metres wide, broader than it is high, which gives it a squat, almost flattened profile rather than the needle-like silhouette that tends to draw the eye across an open field.

The stone sits immediately south-west of the eastern summit of a low ridge on Fearann Dealúigh, a townland on the Corca Dhuibhne, or Dingle, Peninsula in County Kerry. The ridge itself is steep-sided and heavily broken, with rock outcrop and loose scree, which means the stone occupies a slightly precarious-looking terrain rather than a cleared ceremonial plateau. Its orientation runs roughly north-north-west to south-south-east, an alignment that may once have carried astronomical or territorial significance, though the record does not speculate on this. A small portion of the south-eastern side has become detached over time. The smaller upright beside it measures 0.45 metres in height and sits at right angles to the main stone, tucked against the south-eastern end of its south-western face; whether this second stone is original to the monument or a later addition is not recorded. The site was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a comprehensive regional study that catalogued prehistoric and early historic remains across this extraordinarily dense archaeological landscape.

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