Standing stone - pair, Bólas, Co. Kerry

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone – pair, Bólas, Co. Kerry

Two standing stones on the southern slope of Bolus Mountain in County Kerry occupy a position that seems almost deliberately chosen for solitude.

They do not appear on Ordnance Survey maps, which means they have gone largely unnoticed by anyone not already looking for them, yet there they stand in elevated pasture, facing out over the Atlantic with the same quiet orientation they have held for millennia.

The stones are set 1.3 metres apart along a north-south line, both roughly rectangular in cross-section. The taller of the two, positioned at the southern end, reaches 1.76 metres above the ground and measures 52 centimetres by 18 centimetres at its base. Its companion to the north stands 1.5 metres high and is slightly broader at the base, measuring 56 centimetres by 23 centimetres. Standing stones of this kind are among the most enduring and least understood monuments in the Irish landscape; they appear throughout Kerry and the wider south-west, often in pairs or small alignments, and are generally associated with the Bronze Age, though precise dating remains difficult without excavation. Their placement on a south-facing slope with an open Atlantic outlook is a recurring feature of such monuments on the Iveragh Peninsula, suggesting that orientation, whether towards the sun, the sea, or some now-lost ceremonial point, was a deliberate part of their siting. The details here were recorded by Aidan O'Sullivan and Jerry Sheehan in their archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press in 1996, which remains one of the most thorough catalogues of prehistoric monuments in this part of Ireland.

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