Standing stone, Rossglass, Co. Cork

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Rossglass, Co. Cork

A large stone lies face-down in a field at Rossglass in north Cork, half-swallowed by vegetation, and the carved marks that someone once cut into its surface have not been seen by anyone in living memory.

The stone measures 2.7 metres in length and roughly a metre across, which suggests it was once a standing stone, the kind of upright prehistoric monument erected across Ireland from the Neolithic period onwards, often as territorial markers, ceremonial focal points, or elements of a wider ritual landscape. Whether it fell naturally, was toppled, or was deliberately laid down is not recorded.

What makes this particular stone quietly interesting is the matter of its grooved lines. When a researcher named Bowman examined the site in 1934 and noted his findings, he recorded a number of incised grooves running along one face of the stone. Carved lines on standing stones are relatively uncommon and can indicate prehistoric decoration or, in some cases, later modification. By the time more recent surveyors visited, those marks had disappeared from view entirely, obscured by the dense overgrowth that now covers much of the stone. The monument does not appear on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of either 1842 or 1904, which means it either escaped the attention of the nineteenth-century mapmakers or was already prostrate and unremarkable-looking by then. The stone lies on a gentle north-east-facing slope in pasture land, in exactly the same position Bowman found it nearly a century ago.

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Pete F
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