Standing stone, Uragh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Stone Monuments
Some monuments make it onto the archaeological record by disappearing.
On a ridge of rough pasture in Uragh, County Kerry, between Lough Inchiquin to the south-east and Cloonee Lough Upper to the north-west, there is a standing stone that no longer appears to stand, or indeed to exist in any visible form at all.
The stone was recorded by B. Ó Cíobháin, whose survey work fed into the Archaeological Inventory of County Kerry, but no descriptive details of the stone were noted at the time of recording. When the site was subsequently examined, no remains could be found. Standing stones are among the more durable fixtures of the Irish landscape, typically large single upright stones set into the ground during the Bronze Age or earlier, and capable of surviving millennia of farming and weather. The absence of any trace here is therefore a little curious. Whether the stone was removed, was buried, or was perhaps misidentified in the first instance is not recorded.
What remains is essentially a placeholder in the official record, a named site without a surviving monument, located in one of the more quietly dramatic stretches of south-west Kerry. The landscape itself is well attested; Uragh Wood, near Lough Inchiquin, is known for its ancient oak cover. But the stone, if it ever stood on that ridge, has left nothing behind except its entry in a list.