Standing stone, Timoney Hills, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Timoney Hills, Co. Tipperary

Scattered across undulating pasture in County Tipperary, the Timoney Hills standing stones represent one of the largest concentrations of standing stones in Ireland, and yet a quiet question hangs over the whole assembly: are they ancient at all?

The site sits within the landscaped grounds of Timoney Park, the former Parker-Hutchinson estate, and it is precisely that location which has led some to wonder whether the stones were arranged, or rearranged, as a form of ornamental antiquarianism rather than having been placed there in prehistory.

When the Inspector of National Monuments surveyed the area in 1934 to 1936, he counted 221 stones still standing, 173 in the townland of Timoney Hills and 48 in the adjoining townland of Cullaun. His description is striking in its candour: the stones, he wrote, are not arranged on any particular system, apart from one obvious stone circle in Cullaun. All are 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 by Stout in 1984 recorded 245 stones in total, noting that 70 had been removed and that five cairns, which are low mounded structures sometimes associated with burial, had also disappeared. The individual stone recorded here as 5N stands 1.1 metres high, rectangular in section, and is orientated north to south along its long axis. It is one of 46 stones identified within a single field.

What a visitor finds, then, is something genuinely unusual: not a tidy prehistoric monument with a clear purpose, but a sprawling, somewhat enigmatic population of stones spread through private parkland, their origins still debated, their arrangement suggestive of either deep prehistory or a landed family's fondness for the ancient aesthetic.

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