Stone, Mullystaghan, Co. Meath
Co. Meath |
Crosses & Monuments
A small upright pillar stone in a field in Mullystaghan, County Meath, is easy to overlook entirely.
It stands just half a metre tall, roughly the height of a kerbstone, and measures only seventeen centimetres across its widest face. What lifts it out of the ordinary is a single carved motif on one face: a simple Latin cross cut cleanly into the stone, extending its full width and running almost to the very top edge.
The stone sits towards the bottom of a north-west facing slope, inside a large enclosure, about ten metres from the field bank that also marks the townland boundary with Tullypole to the south. It was recorded on the 1836 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, where it appears labelled in gothic lettering simply as "Stone", that particular cartographic convention used by the OS to note ancient or notable standing stones without committing to a specific interpretation. The carved cross was documented by Hicks in 1974, who noted it in the context of inscribed and decorated stones from the wider region. Pillar stones of this kind, upright slabs or columns set deliberately into the ground, are found across Ireland from prehistoric periods onward, and the addition of a Christian cross motif suggests either that this example was carved during the early medieval period or that an older stone was later marked with Christian symbolism as the faith spread through the landscape.
The stone remains within what appears to be a field setting close to the townland boundary. Its modest scale means it rewards attention rather than announces itself, and the carved cross, despite its simplicity, is the detail that gives the site its quiet significance.