Standing stone, Timoney Hills, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Timoney Hills, Co. Tipperary

Scattered across the undulating pastures of Timoney Park in County Tipperary is one of the largest concentrations of standing stones in Ireland, and possibly one of the most puzzling.

A survey conducted in the 1930s counted 221 stones still standing across two neighbouring townlands, Timoney Hills and Cullaun, and an earlier map recorded as many as 245, of which 70 had already been removed along with five cairns. One individual stone in this field, rectangular in plan and standing 1.7 metres high, sits with a second stone just four metres to its south-west, both of red sandstone or conglomerate. It is the sheer number of stones, spread apparently without any obvious arrangement, that gives the place its peculiar quality.

When the Inspector of National Monuments recorded the group between 1934 and 1936, his description was carefully measured but candid. The stones, he noted, are not arranged on any particular system, with the single exception of one stone circle in the townland of Cullaun. They range from roughly 0.9 to 1.8 metres in height, cut from the same red sandstone and conglomerate, and at the time of recording numbered 221 across the two townlands. A later publication, the Archaeological Survey of Ikerrin by Stout in 1984, documented the fuller picture of loss and survival. The stones sit within the landscaped grounds of the Parker-Hutchinson estate of Timoney Park, and that setting introduces a complication that has never been fully resolved: the possibility that at least some of the stones were arranged or relocated as ornamental features of the estate, rather than left entirely as prehistoric monuments. Whether the concentration reflects genuine ancient activity, deliberate 18th or 19th century landscaping, or some layered combination of both, remains an open question.

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