Standing stone, Lyremountain, Co. Waterford
Co. Waterford |
Stone Monuments
On a gentle north-facing slope in Lyremountain, County Waterford, a single block of conglomerate stone rises just 1.3 metres from the ground. It is not especially tall, not dramatically positioned on a hilltop or cliff edge, and yet it has been standing there long enough for the surrounding landscape to have arranged itself, almost incidentally, around it. Two streams run nearby, one roughly 150 metres to the west moving south to north, another about 160 metres to the north running east to west. The stone itself is oriented WNW to ESE, a alignment that may or may not be deliberate, though with standing stones it is often difficult to say with certainty.
Conglomerate is a sedimentary rock made up of rounded fragments cemented together over time, and it gives this particular stone a rougher, more composite texture than the smooth granite or sandstone more commonly associated with prehistoric monoliths. The stone measures 1.25 metres in length and between 0.2 and 0.5 metres in width, modest dimensions that nonetheless required considerable effort to erect. Standing stones of this kind were raised during the Bronze Age in Ireland, though their precise purposes remain debated. They have been associated with territorial markers, burial sites, astronomical alignments, and routeways, and in most cases the original intention has been absorbed entirely by time.