Standing stone, Timoney Hills, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Stone Monuments
Across the undulating pasture of a landscaped Tipperary estate, more than two hundred stones of red sandstone and conglomerate rise from the ground at no particular angle to anything, following no discernible pattern, serving no obvious purpose.
That last point is what makes Timoney Hills genuinely puzzling. Most prehistoric standing stone groupings in Ireland conform to some arrangement, however loose. Here, the Inspector of National Monuments noted in 1936 that the stones appear to have been placed with no particular system in mind, save for one stone circle in the adjoining townland of Cullaun.
When the Inspector surveyed the area between 1934 and 1936, he counted 221 stones still upright or lying prostrate across two townlands, Timoney Hills and Cullaun, with 173 in the former and 48 in the latter. By the time Stout's Archaeological Survey of Ikerrin was published in 1984, the total recorded, including those already lost, had reached 245, along with five cairns, all of which had been removed. The stones, ranging from roughly 0.9 to 1.8 metres in height, are all of the same red sandstone or conglomerate, suggesting they were sourced from a single geological period and perhaps a single deliberate programme of work. The individual stone described here measures just under a metre tall, rectangular in section, and is orientated east to west along its long axis, with no packing stones surviving around its base. A second stone stands two metres to the north-east.
There is, however, a complication that shadows the whole site. The stones sit within the landscaped grounds of Timoney Park, the former estate of the Parker-Hutchinson family, and that setting has led some to question whether these are genuinely prehistoric monuments or whether they were arranged, augmented, or even installed as estate features during a period when romantic antiquarianism made standing stones fashionable garden ornaments. No firm conclusion has been reached, and the uncertainty itself is part of what makes the place worth thinking about.

