Standing stone - pair, Clontaaffe, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Stone Monuments
Two low stones of shaly limestone sit together on a natural hillock in a quiet Tipperary valley, and what makes them quietly unusual is not their height but their context.
Neither stone is especially imposing, the larger reaching only 0.9 metres above ground, yet they were placed with evident intention within a kerbed enclosure, a roughly circular arrangement defined by a bank with stone revetment on both its inner and outer faces. Only the south-eastern and south-western portions of that bank survive, but enough remains to show that these stones were not simply set into open ground. They were given a frame.
The pair is aligned on a north-east to south-west axis, a orientation common to prehistoric standing stones across Ireland and often associated with solar or lunar sight-lines, though the precise purpose of any individual pair is rarely certain. The larger stone lies to the south-west and measures 1.6 metres in length; the smaller, just 0.7 metres away to the north-east, is notably thinner, between 0.13 and 0.25 metres across. Both are composed of the local shaly limestone. The surrounding valley is enclosed by higher ground on all sides except to the south, and the immediate landscape is wet and rushy, the kind of low-lying ground that has a way of preserving ancient features simply by discouraging later disturbance. Coniferous forestry has since been planted across much of the area, including around the monument itself, which adds a degree of concealment that is modern rather than ancient.