Standing stone, Glenlohane, Co. Cork

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Glenlohane, Co. Cork

Most standing stones stay put.

This one, on a ridge of high ground in the Glenlohane townland of County Cork, did not. At some point before it was formally recorded, the stone was moved from its original position to a rough quarry area to the south-west, and what it left behind may be more interesting than the stone itself. A water diviner working in the area in recent years reported encountering a rectangular chamber beneath the spot where the stone had originally stood. No excavation has confirmed this, and the claim sits in that uncertain space between folk knowledge and archaeology, but it is the kind of detail that makes a straightforward monument considerably less straightforward.

The stone itself is substantial and irregular, measuring roughly 2.2 metres by 1.5 metres in plan and standing about 1.6 metres high. That combination of dimensions is unusual. Standing stones as a monument type, found across Ireland and dating generally to the Bronze Age, tend toward a simpler profile, and the proportions here are described by archaeologists as atypical, with the precise nature of the monument still unresolved. It is very likely the same stone noted in the 1930s on the land of a Mr. Bolster in Glenlohane, recorded at that time with measurements of roughly 3 feet high by 10 feet by 7 feet. The slight discrepancy between the older and newer measurements is not unusual given the informality of earlier recording methods. The reference to that earlier description appears in a 2000 study by Bowman, suggesting the stone had already accumulated a modest paper trail even before its displacement was properly documented.

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