Stone row, Cullomane, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
On a west-facing slope above the valley of the Durrus river in West Cork, three stones are arranged in a line that stretches six metres from northeast to southwest.
One still stands, one lies flat and is slowly disappearing into the earth, and one has split clean in two. The ensemble is quiet, unassuming, and easy to overlook, which perhaps explains why so few people seek it out.
Stone rows, alignments of two or more upright stones set in a deliberate line, are a recurring feature of the prehistoric landscape of Munster, and West Cork has a notable concentration of them. The Cullomane example is modest in scale but precise in its surviving detail. The northeastern stone stands 1.5 metres tall and is still upright. The middle stone has fallen and lies partly buried, measuring 1.7 metres in length, now more of an earthwork than a monument. The southwestern stone, roughly two metres beyond that, has fractured into two pieces, standing at around 1.1 metres. What caused the split is unknown; it may have been frost, or the slow pressure of the ground shifting over millennia. Roughly 23 metres to the northeast of the row, a separate standing stone occupies the same slope, close enough to suggest a deliberate relationship between the two features, though what that relationship meant to the people who placed them here is long beyond recovery.