Standing stone, Shanballymore, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Stone Monuments
A limestone slab in a Tipperary field is slowly being undermined by cattle.
The hollow worn around its base is almost certainly the result of generations of livestock using the stone as a scratching post, a mundane fate for something that was almost certainly raised with deliberate intent, possibly thousands of years ago. It now leans heavily to the north, its visible height reduced to around 0.9 metres above ground, though the full length of the stone measures 1.6 metres, suggesting a considerable portion has either sunk or been buried over time.
Standing stones, as a monument type, are among the most enigmatic survivals in the Irish landscape. Their original purposes are rarely recoverable with certainty; they have been associated with burial, land marking, ritual, and astronomical alignment, though individual examples seldom yield clean answers. This particular stone is rectangular in plan, narrowing slightly from base to top, with its long axis running roughly north-northwest to south-southeast. It sits on a gentle slope facing northwest, in what is now improved pasture. A field boundary to the north has been removed at some point, altering the immediate landscape around it, and an enclosure of some kind lies approximately 120 metres to the southwest, hinting that the stone may once have existed within a broader, now largely invisible, pattern of activity in this area.