Standing stone, Loughgur, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Stone Monuments
A standing stone that failed to appear on any historic Ordnance Survey map, and then managed to disappear again from aerial photography taken in 2005, only to reappear in imagery captured sometime between 2011 and 2013, is either very modest or very patient.
This particular limestone upright sits in pasture on the south-eastern slope of Killalough Hill in County Limerick, roughly half a kilometre south-east of Lough Gur, one of the most monument-dense prehistoric landscapes in Ireland. The stone itself is unassuming: 1.2 metres high, deeply fractured, and coated in white and yellow lichen, its long axis oriented roughly ENE to WSW. Its southern face tilts gently downslope, and clumps of rough grass have accumulated around its base, pushed up by the repeated passage of cattle across the surrounding ground.
When the Archaeological Survey of Ireland inspected the stone in 2007, they noted how heavily worn the earth around it was, the kind of compaction that comes from generations of livestock using a fixed upright as a rubbing post or a waymarker without knowing or caring what it is. Standing stones, as a class of monument, are among the most difficult to date precisely; they appear across Ireland from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age and into the early medieval period, erected for purposes that likely varied as much as the people who raised them. What makes this one quietly interesting is its obscurity even within a landscape famous for prehistoric remains. A ringfort lies 375 metres to the east-south-east, a cairn sits 150 metres to the north-east, and a pair of standing stones stand 235 metres to the north-west, yet this particular stone went unrecorded on maps that documented its neighbours. Whether it was overlooked, mistaken for a field boundary marker, or simply too lichen-covered and low to catch a surveyor's attention is unclear.
The site is in working farmland, so access requires both care and, ideally, prior awareness of land boundaries in the area. The stone's location can be cross-referenced using Google Earth orthoimages from 2016, 2018, and 2020, which show it clearly enough to orient a visit. The Lough Gur area itself is well signposted from the R512, and the broader landscape is worth approaching slowly, on foot where possible, since the density of monuments here means that almost any direction you walk will bring you past something ancient. The stone is easy to miss even when you are close to it, which is arguably part of what makes finding it satisfying.