Standing stone, Glenaknockane, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
What looks, at first glance, like a single field monument turns out to be something more complicated.
On a north-west-facing slope in Glenaknockane, a lone standing stone leans noticeably southward, its long axis running north-west to south-east. It stands roughly a metre tall, with a broad, irregular face measuring about two metres across at its widest, giving it a squat, slightly tilted presence in the rough pasture. What makes the spot more interesting is that it is not alone: a second standing stone sits approximately fifty metres to the north-east, and a third lies around sixty-five metres to the south-east in an adjacent field.
Standing stones are among the most common prehistoric monuments in Ireland, erected most often during the Bronze Age, though their precise purposes remain debated. Some are thought to mark boundaries, burial sites, or astronomical alignments; others may have served as waypoints across open landscape. The grouping at Glenaknockane hints at something more deliberate than a single marker. A 1934 reference by Bowman, recorded in J. Lyons, noted a group of four standing stones at this location, which means at least one stone from the original arrangement has since been lost or has yet to be positively identified. The surviving three, spread across two fields on that sloping ground, represent a partial survivor of what was evidently a more substantial prehistoric grouping.