Standing stone, Ballynacourty, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Stone Monuments
At Ballynacourty in County Kerry, a standing stone has managed the peculiar feat of disappearing entirely, leaving behind only a cartographic ghost.
The term 'gallaun' is the Irish word commonly used for a standing stone, typically a single upright megalith erected in prehistoric times, and one was clearly recorded here on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map. By the time surveyors returned, it was gone, with no trace remaining on the ground.
The situation grew more complicated rather than less. A later Ordnance Survey memoir noted two stones in the general area, yet neither of them occupied the position marked on the earlier map. The 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey by J. Cuppage, covering the Corca Dhuibhne region, documented the discrepancy without being able to resolve it. The result is a site that exists more as an open question than as a monument: it is genuinely uncertain how many stones originally stood here, whether the two later stones are survivors of a larger arrangement, displaced versions of the original, or entirely separate features that confused the picture further.