Standing stone, Glebe, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Stone Monuments
Within the graveyard of a parish church in Monamolin, a small stone stands just one metre tall, easy to overlook among the more recent grave markers that surround it.
What makes it worth a second glance is its age and its triangular profile, a shape that suggests deliberate shaping or careful selection, and the fact that it predates the Christian context it now inhabits by a considerable margin. Standing stones of this kind are among the most enduring and least understood features of the Irish landscape, typically associated with the Bronze Age, though their original purposes remain debated. Boundary markers, ritual sites, commemorative monuments, the theories are various and none fully settled.
This particular stone sits in the south-eastern corner of the graveyard, towards the bottom of a south-facing slope, and measures roughly sixty centimetres wide, fifty centimetres deep, and one metre in height. Its association with the parish church of Monamolin places it in a pattern seen across Ireland, where early Christian communities established themselves at or near sites that already carried some form of significance. Whether the stone was already standing when the church was founded, or was incorporated later, is not recorded. What is clear is that it has remained in place long enough to become simply part of the landscape of the graveyard, neither prominently marked nor removed.
