Stone row, Derrynagree, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
Deep in forest at the head of the Sruhaunphadeen Stream valley, northeast of Douce Mountain in mid-Cork, three stones sit in a rough line that is not quite a line.
The northeasternmost stone has wandered noticeably out of alignment with its companions and leans heavily to the west, as though distracted. A loose boulder rests against the base of the tallest stone at the southwestern end. It is a small, quiet, slightly dishevelled prehistoric monument, and that combination of imprecision and evident age is precisely what makes it interesting.
Stone rows are a prehistoric monument type found across the southwest of Ireland, generally thought to date from the Bronze Age, though their precise purpose remains uncertain. They may have had astronomical, ritual, or territorial functions, or some combination of all three. This particular example, catalogued by the archaeologist Seán Ó Nualláin in 1988, is classed as a probable row rather than a definitive one, partly because the northeastern stone sits so far out of true. The three stones run along a northeast to southwest axis and span 4.65 metres in overall length. The northeastern stone, the most wayward of the three, would stand only around 0.7 metres high if fully upright, making it noticeably shorter than the southwestern stone, which reaches 1.7 metres. The middle stone stands at 1.2 metres. Eighteen metres to the west lies a circular enclosure, a separate feature that may or may not be related, but whose proximity adds another layer of quiet strangeness to the site.
The setting inside commercial forestry means that access and visibility can vary considerably depending on the state of the surrounding planting. The stones are not large by the standards of more celebrated Cork alignments, and the leaning northeastern stone in particular might easily be mistaken for a natural feature rather than a placed one. The loose boulder at the base of the tallest stone is worth noting; it may have shifted there over centuries, or it may always have been part of the arrangement.