Stone row, Lissaclarig, Co. Cork

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Stone Monuments

Stone row, Lissaclarig, Co. Cork

Along a quiet laneway in Lissaclarig, a prehistoric stone row has been quietly absorbed into the field boundaries around it, its stones pressed into service as fence posts and boundary markers without anyone particularly remarking on the fact.

Two of the three stones in the alignment, oriented northeast to southwest, now form part of the fence along the southern side of the lane. The third, a substantial slab measuring four metres in length, lies on its edge in the opposite fence, and its western end has been smashed away to widen a field entrance. It is the kind of incremental damage that happens not out of malice but out of practicality, which in some ways makes it harder to square with the scale of what was originally put there.

Stone rows are a recurring feature of the prehistoric landscape of West Cork and Kerry, typically Bronze Age in date, though their precise purpose remains a matter of debate. They are generally thought to have had a ceremonial or astronomical function, with many alignments oriented towards significant points on the horizon at key moments in the solar or lunar calendar. The Lissaclarig row sits near the crest of a low ridge, a prominent position in the local landscape, and the northeast-southwest alignment follows a pattern common to the region. The tallest surviving upright, the southwest stone of the row, stands 3.6 metres high and is 1.3 metres wide, a considerable presence even when you encounter it half-buried in a modern fence line. A separate upright stone, 4.35 metres to the south of the main alignment, stands 1.55 metres high; whether it is directly related to the row or represents a distinct feature is not recorded. Thirty metres to the southwest, a ringfort occupies the highest point of the ridge, a reminder that this modest elevation was considered a meaningful place across several different periods of Irish prehistory and early history.

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