Standing stone, Loughane, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Loughane, Co. Cork

Some ancient monuments survive for millennia; others disappear quietly, leaving only a description on a page.

The standing stone that once occupied a field at Loughane in mid-Cork is of the second kind. It is gone now, removed at some point after it was measured and noted, and the pasture where it stood gives no indication that anything was ever there.

What survives is a record made by Condon in 1916, precise enough to make the loss feel concrete. The stone was reddish in colour, stood five feet and five inches tall, was two feet wide, and a foot thick, proportions that suggest a substantial, deliberately placed upright rather than a casual field clearance. It stood roughly thirty-five metres north-north-east of the Lisnaraha ringfort, a ringfort being a circular earthwork enclosure of the early medieval period, typically used as a farmstead. That proximity is unlikely to have been accidental. Standing stones in Ireland are notoriously difficult to date with precision, but their frequent appearance near ringforts and other ancient features points to a landscape that was being actively organised and marked across many centuries. Whether this stone predated the ringfort or was raised alongside it is a question that can no longer be answered by looking at the ground.

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