Stone circle, Ballyedmonduff, Co. Dublin
Co. Dublin |
Stone Monuments
On the lower southern slopes of Two Rock Mountain in County Dublin, there is a stone circle that almost no one will ever see.
Not because it is remote or restricted, but because in 1972 it was planted over with trees, and today there is nothing visible at ground level to suggest that anything prehistoric ever stood there at all.
The circle was first identified by Healy in 1967, with findings published in 1975. It consisted of seven orthostats, upright standing stones each reaching roughly a metre in height, arranged in a circular formation, with a further ten stones only partially exposed at the time of recording. Stone circles of this kind are broadly understood to be prehistoric monuments, likely associated with ritual or ceremonial activity, though their precise purposes remain debated. What is unusual here is not the archaeology itself but its fate. The decision to plant the site with trees in 1972 effectively buried the monument beneath forestry, and the above-ground evidence was lost. It is a quiet example of how development and land management, even with no malicious intent, can erase material that took millennia to accumulate.
For anyone curious enough to visit the area, Two Rock Mountain sits within the Dublin Mountains and is accessible via a number of walking routes south of the city. The broader landscape contains other prehistoric remains, so there is archaeological context even if this particular site offers nothing to see on the ground. If you do make your way to the lower southern slopes at Ballyedmonduff, the absence itself becomes a kind of point. Somewhere beneath the tree cover, the stones recorded by Healy are presumably still there, partially exposed and arranged just as they were left, waiting for a survey that may or may not come.