Standing stone, Timoney Hills, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Stone Monuments
A single upright slab of red sandstone, measuring just over a metre tall, sits in undulating pasture on the Timoney Park estate in County Tipperary.
Unremarkable on its own, perhaps, but it is one of at least 221 such stones recorded across two adjoining townlands, Timoney Hills and Cullaun, making this one of the densest concentrations of standing stones anywhere in Ireland. What makes the place genuinely puzzling is not the stones themselves but the question that hangs over them: are they ancient at all?
When the Inspector of National Monuments surveyed the site between 1934 and 1936, he counted 221 surviving stones, 173 in Timoney Hills and 48 in Cullaun, and noted they appeared to follow no obvious arrangement, aside from one stone circle in Cullaun. All were of red sandstone or conglomerate, ranging from roughly 0.9 to 1.8 metres in height. A later map published in the Archaeological Survey of Ikerrin, compiled by Stout in 1984, recorded as many as 245 stones in total, with 70 already removed and five cairns gone entirely. The individual stone referenced here, catalogued as 6G1, is rectangular in plan, orientated west-northwest to east-southeast along its long axis, and carries the designation National Monument No. 353. Yet the fact that all of these stones sit within the landscaped grounds of the Parker-Hutchinson estate of Timoney Park has prompted serious doubt about whether they are prehistoric monuments or relatively modern landscape features, placed or arranged by estate owners with a taste for the antiquarian. That question, as far as the archaeological record is concerned, remains open.

