Standing stone, Glannaheera, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Stone Monuments
Some archaeological sites are notable for what remains.
This one is notable for what does not. On an east-facing slope of Brickany mountain in Glannaheera, a standing stone that had survived millennia of Irish weather was removed within living memory, leaving behind only its coordinates, a few lines of description, and the faint outline of its former presence in the landscape.
The stone was recorded under the Irish term 'gullaun', a word used in parts of Munster for a single upright standing stone, and it appeared on both the Ordnance Survey Fair Plan and the first edition of the OS map, the latter leaving it untitled. It stood roughly five feet, or about 1.5 metres, tall and occupied a patch of reclaimed pastureland less than fifty metres from a small tributary of the Emlagh river. The site was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, a comprehensive survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, but by the time the record was updated for the online age, local sources confirmed the stone had been removed approximately twelve years prior to the 2013 upload date. That puts its disappearance somewhere around the early 2000s, well within the era of GPS and digital mapping, which makes the loss feel less like the slow erosion of history and more like a deliberate choice.