Stone row, Curragh More, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Stone Monuments

Stone row, Curragh More, Co. Kerry

On a saddle ridge in the Kerry uplands, unrecorded on Ordnance Survey maps, three ancient standing stones form a row that almost nobody passes.

The site sits between Broaghnabinna mountain to the south and Curragh More lake to the north, on a spine of high ground that divides the Black Valley from the Bridia Valley. The peat here runs roughly 45 centimetres deep, which means the monument has been slowly sinking into the landscape for millennia, its lower portions long swallowed by bog.

The row itself stretches just 2.7 metres from end to end and is orientated along an east-south-east to west-north-west axis, a directional alignment common among prehistoric stone rows in south-west Ireland, where such arrangements are thought to relate to solar or lunar events on the horizon. Stone rows, which typically date to the Bronze Age, are a feature of the Iveragh Peninsula in particular, and this example, catalogued by researcher Ó Nuallain in 1988, follows the regional convention of graduating in height. The tallest stone, at the eastern end, rises to 1.95 metres, with packing stones still visible at its base where it was wedged into position by whoever raised it. The central stone, only 0.72 metres high, is the smallest of the three. The westernmost stone stands 0.9 metres and is oriented with its long axis running north to south, at a slight angle to the overall alignment of the row. Each stone is modest in girth but together they have a quiet, deliberate geometry that is hard to attribute to accident.

Because the site does not appear on standard maps, finding it requires working from the landscape itself: the ridge running north from Broaghnabinna is the key landmark, and the deep peat underfoot makes the approach slow going. The stones are low enough, and the terrain open enough, that they can be easy to miss until you are almost level with them.

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