Stone row, Garrough, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Stone Monuments

Stone row, Garrough, Co. Kerry

Of the four stones that once made up this prehistoric alignment beside the Coomnahorna river in south Kerry, two now lie flat on the ground.

That detail alone tells a quiet story of a monument slowly losing its footing over the millennia, yet the two that remain upright are substantial enough to arrest attention: one stands 1.4 metres high, the other reaches 3.38 metres and leans noticeably towards the east. The row stretches 10.44 metres in total along a broadly north-east to south-west axis, and from its level terrace above the river it looks out along the valley all the way to Darrynane Bay in the west.

Stone rows are a feature of the Bronze Age landscape across the Iveragh Peninsula, and this example at Garrough sits within a cluster of related monuments. A pair of standing stones lies less than 300 metres to the south-west, suggesting this corner of the valley was a focus of prehistoric activity rather than a single isolated gesture. Just three metres to the south-east of the row, a small roughly circular enclosure survives as a low bank, internally faced with stone, standing around a metre high and averaging 1.25 metres wide; it encloses a space of approximately 4.28 by 4.62 metres. Its relationship to the row is not spelled out in the record, but its proximity is unlikely to be coincidental. The prostrate stone at the north-east end, measuring 3.7 metres in length when laid out, would have been a considerable presence when standing; the pit from which it fell, or was toppled, is still visible a metre north-east of its neighbour. Ó Nualláin documented the row in 1988, and it was subsequently included in A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan's archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press in 1996.

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