Stone circle - five-stone, Trawlebane, Co. Cork

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Stone Monuments

Stone circle – five-stone, Trawlebane, Co. Cork

Five stones do not sound like many, and yet the five-stone circle at Trawlebane in County Cork manages, in its quiet way, to be one of the more thought-provoking prehistoric monuments in West Cork.

Small, complete, and sitting on a level terrace cut into a south-facing slope above the valley of the Owennashingaun river, it belongs to a category of monument that is peculiar to the Cork and Kerry region. Five-stone circles, as the name suggests, consist of a pair of portal stones flanking a low axial stone at one end, two further stones filling out the ring, and the whole arrangement oriented along a deliberate astronomical or ceremonial axis.

This particular example survives intact, which is far from guaranteed for monuments of this age. The five stones range from roughly 0.8 to 1.5 metres in length and reach between 0.7 and 1.1 metres in height, making this a modest but legible structure. Its main axis runs northeast to southwest, a common alignment among Cork stone circles and one thought by some researchers to relate to solar or lunar events at particular times of year. The interior, just 2.4 metres across along that axis, has been filled with field stones at some point, most likely cleared from the surrounding land by farmers who found the circle a convenient place to deposit them. The southern entrance stone, one of the portal pair, is split, though it remains in place. The circle sits in the valley of the Owennashingaun, a quietly rural setting that would not have looked so different in the Bronze Age, when monuments of this type were most likely constructed.

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