Standing stone - pair, Curraghcloney, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Stone Monuments
On a gently undulating, north-west-facing slope in the upland pasture of Curraghcloney, two stones of red sandstone sit about two metres apart, aligned along a south-west to north-east axis.
One stands upright, flat-topped and rectangular, with a conspicuous vertical vein of quartz running down its face and a smaller quartz seam on its north-east side. The other has fallen, or was perhaps never fully raised, and presents a five-sided, triangular profile with a sloping top. Between them, an unembedded boulder sits quietly in the gap, belonging to neither stone in any structural sense, its presence unexplained. Stone pairs like these are a relatively rare monument type in the Irish prehistoric landscape, and the careful packing stones set around each upright suggest deliberate, considered placement rather than chance survival.
The material itself is worth pausing over. Both stones are composed of the same red sandstone with quartz inclusions, which implies they were either selected from the same local source or chosen precisely because they matched. The quartz is unlikely to be incidental; at many prehistoric sites across Ireland, quartz appears to have carried symbolic or ritual significance, used to line burial chambers or mark significant thresholds. Whether that logic applies here is unknown, but the prominent vein running down the face of the upright stone would have caught light in ways that a plain surface would not. Close by to the north and north-west, four small cairns, possibly the result of prehistoric field clearance, suggest that people were working and moving through this landscape over a sustained period, and the standing stones may have served as markers within that longer human relationship with the upland terrain.
