Standing stone, Timoney Hills, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Timoney Hills, Co. Tipperary

Scattered across undulating pasture in County Tipperary, one of the largest concentrations of standing stones in Ireland occupies ground that raises more questions than it answers.

At Timoney Hills and the adjoining townland of Cullaun, hundreds of red sandstone and conglomerate uprights rise between roughly one and nearly two metres from the earth, arranged with no obvious geometric logic, save for one stone circle identified in Cullaun. A nineteenth-century map recorded 245 stones in total, along with five cairns; by the time a formal survey was carried out, seventy stones and all five cairns had already gone. This particular stone, designated 7O on a recorded map of the group, now cannot be found at all, the field having been swallowed by furze and scrub.

When the Inspector of National Monuments surveyed the site between 1934 and 1936, he counted 221 survivors across the two townlands, describing them as a most remarkable group. All the stones appear to be of the same geological material, suggesting a consistent source and perhaps a single period of erection, though what that period was remains genuinely uncertain. The complication is the setting itself. Timoney Hills sits within the landscaped estate of Timoney Park, associated with the Parker-Hutchinson family, and that context has led some researchers to question whether these are ancient prehistoric monuments at all, or whether they were arranged, augmented, or even installed as estate ornaments during a period when romantic antiquarianism made such gestures fashionable among the landed gentry. The matter has not been resolved, and that ambiguity is part of what makes the place so unusual. A field full of standing stones that may or may not be ancient is, in its own way, a stranger thing than one that simply is.

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