Standing stone, Monalee, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Stone Monuments
On a south-facing slope of Croghaun Mountain in County Wexford, a single slab of shale rises out of the ground to about the height of a person's chest.
It is not especially tall, not dramatically shaped, and there is no surrounding earthwork or enclosure to give it context. What it has is orientation: the stone runs ENE-WSW, a deliberate alignment that almost certainly meant something to whoever went to the effort of erecting it, though what exactly that was has not survived.
Standing stones of this kind are among the most common yet least understood monuments in the Irish landscape. They range from massive pillars to modest slabs, and their purposes appear to have varied accordingly, from burial markers to boundary indicators to sites with astronomical or ritual significance. This particular example is modest by any measure, at 1.5 metres tall and just 0.55 metres wide and 0.2 metres thick, but the choice of shale and the precise ENE-WSW orientation suggest it was placed with intention rather than convenience. A stream runs roughly 450 metres to the north-east, which may or may not have informed the choice of location; proximity to water is a recurring feature of prehistoric monument placement in Ireland, though the reasons remain a matter of debate.