Stoup (present location), Doonpeter, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Religious Objects

Stoup (present location), Doonpeter, Co. Cork

In the south-east corner of a burial ground at Doonpeter, Co. Cork, a small rectangular stone sits flush with the ground, its most distinctive feature a steep-sided bowl carved into its upper face.

The depression measures roughly 23 centimetres across and 21 centimetres deep, and when visited it was half-filled with rainwater. This is a bullaun stone, a type of ancient carved basin found at ecclesiastical sites across Ireland, whose original function is still debated but which was frequently associated with sacred or ritual use. Nearby, lying on the ground, is a stone lid, missing a piece, that appears to have been made to cover the basin.

Two upright slabs, standing roughly 80 centimetres high and set about 1.2 metres apart, rise immediately to the south of the bullaun. One of them has a white cross painted on it. Writing in 1914, a researcher named O'Donoghue identified these slabs as the former doorway of an ancient church, and the ground behind them, presumably the interior of that long-vanished structure, is now described as heavily overgrown. On the north side of the area, a modern holy statue stands in a wooden shelter, suggesting that the site has retained some devotional significance even as the older fabric around it has largely disappeared. O'Donoghue also recorded a local story attached to the bullaun: a woman who removed the stone was, according to tradition, compelled by an unseen hand to return it under cover of night, the kind of cautionary tale that attaches itself to stones of this sort across Ireland, warning against interference with objects belonging, in some sense, to a place rather than to any person.

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Pete F
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