Standing stone, Poulmaloe, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Stone Monuments
At Poulmaloe in County Wexford, there is a site on the archaeological record that no longer exists.
A standing stone, the kind of upright prehistoric marker that punctuates the Irish landscape in varying states of survival, was noted here on a gentle south-west-facing slope, but it has since disappeared entirely.
The only documentary evidence for the stone comes from the 1940 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, where it was recorded and briefly described by surveyors. At that time it was still standing, with a roughly rectangular cross-section measuring approximately 0.65 metres by 0.6 metres and a height somewhere between 1.4 and 1.6 metres, making it a modest but recognisable monument. Whether it was removed, buried, or simply fell and was cleared away is not recorded. By the time later fieldwork was carried out, it was gone. The 1940 map notation is now the closest thing to a witness account the stone has left behind.