Standing stone, Portloman, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Portloman, Co. Westmeath

On a low ridge in the grasslands of County Westmeath, there is a monument that exists primarily as an absence.

A standing stone, the kind of solitary upright megalith erected in prehistoric Ireland as a marker, boundary, or site of ritual significance, was recorded at this spot on the 1837 Ordnance Survey Fair Plan map. It does not appear on any subsequent edition of the OS six-inch maps, and when surveyors visited, they found no trace of it at all.

The 1837 Fair Plan was an early working document in the Ordnance Survey's meticulous mapping of Ireland, and it sometimes captured features that were already marginal or declining by the time the finished maps were printed. Whether the stone was removed between the first survey and the publication of the six-inch sheets, or whether the original record was an error, is now impossible to say. What survives in the landscape nearby offers some context for what the stone may once have belonged to: a bowl-barrow lies roughly 125 metres to the north, and Portloman Church stands about 200 metres to the northeast. A bowl-barrow is a low, circular earthen mound of prehistoric origin, typically associated with burial. The clustering of such features suggests this gentle ridge once held a degree of ceremonial or commemorative significance, even if the stone that marked it is long gone.

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