Standing stone - pair, Eyeries, Co. Cork

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone – pair, Eyeries, Co. Cork

Two stones were set upright in a field near Eyeries on the Beara Peninsula, aligned along a northeast to southwest axis, sometime in prehistory.

Today, only one of them still stands. The other, which once measured 1.9 metres in length, has fallen and now lies flat on the ground, though the socket into which it was originally planted remains visible at its northwest end. The pair are separated by just under six metres, sitting on level pasture roughly ninety metres north of the Kealincha river, in the quiet hinterland behind Coulagh Bay.

Paired standing stones of this kind are a recurring feature of the prehistoric landscape of West Cork and Kerry. They tend to be interpreted as markers, though whether of territory, astronomy, or something else entirely has never been satisfactorily resolved. What is known is that this particular pair was still fully upright as recently as 1970, when both stones were recorded standing by O'Brien. At some point between that observation and the later survey work of Ó Nualláin, documented in 1988, the southeastern stone came down. The surviving stone reaches just over a metre in height and is broad and squat, measuring roughly 0.9 metres by 0.75 metres at its base. Its fallen companion was noticeably larger, suggesting the two were not selected for uniformity but perhaps for some other quality or purpose that is no longer legible to us.

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