Standing stone, Tooreennasliggaun, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Stone Monuments
At the boundary between waterlogged bog and rough pasture in Tooreennasliggaun, a broad, irregularly shaped stone rises almost two metres out of the ground, largely swallowed by overgrowth and easy to miss entirely.
It is the kind of monument that rewards persistence rather than a casual glance, orientated on a northeast to southwest axis and still showing the packing stones wedged around its base to keep it upright, a small but telling sign that someone set it deliberately in place rather than simply leaving it where it fell.
Standing stones of this kind appear throughout Kerry and the wider southwest of Ireland, and while many have been studied, few yield much in the way of documentary certainty. They are generally thought to date from the Bronze Age, though some may be later, and their original purposes remain genuinely debated, with theories ranging from boundary markers and memorial stones to astronomical alignments. What can be said of the Tooreennasliggaun stone is that it measures 1.95 metres in height and 1.33 metres by 0.65 metres at its base, making it a solid, substantial presence rather than a modest field stone. Its position along a field boundary that still divides bog from pasture is quietly suggestive, as if the modern agricultural division echoes something much older about how this particular stretch of land was understood and used.