Standing stone, Fornaght, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
A standing stone that did not appear on either the 1842 or the 1903 Ordnance Survey six-inch maps is, by definition, a stone that slipped through the net of official record-keeping for the better part of a century.
That alone makes the example at Fornaght in County Cork quietly notable. It sits in bogland, a setting that would have helped it avoid the surveyor's eye, surrounded by the kind of soft, waterlogged ground that tends to discourage casual investigation.
The stone itself is modest in scale but precise in form. Standing 1.2 metres high, it measures 0.84 metres by 0.1 metres and is described as subrectangular in plan, meaning its cross-section is roughly rectangular rather than the irregular or pillar-like shapes more commonly associated with prehistoric standing stones. Its long axis runs east to west, an orientation that may or may not carry prehistoric significance but is worth noting given how frequently east-west and north-south alignments appear at such monuments across Ireland. It lies approximately 50 metres to the north-west of a second standing stone in the same townland, suggesting this part of Fornaght was once a more deliberate ceremonial or territorial landscape than its present boggy unremarkableness might imply. Standing stones of this type are generally understood to date from the Bronze Age, though they are notoriously difficult to date precisely without associated finds or excavation.