Standing stone - pair, Úraid, Co. Galway

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone – pair, Úraid, Co. Galway

At the foot of Cnoc Úraid in County Galway, two prehistoric standing stones have been quietly absorbed into the corner of a working sheepfold.

The L-shaped drystone enclosure was built around them rather than in spite of them, meaning that what was once a ceremonial or territorial marker now serves as part of a livestock pen. It is a small, unannounced collision of prehistory and pastoral practicality.

The pair sit atop a prominent glacial ridge, the kind of elevated spine of boulder clay deposited by retreating ice sheets thousands of years before anyone thought to erect stones upon it. They are aligned roughly north to south, set about 1.15 metres apart, and both are subrectangular in plan. The southern stone still stands, reaching 1.15 metres in height. The northern one has fallen and now lies prostrate, measuring 1.14 metres long, 0.65 metres wide, and 0.55 metres thick. The scholar Ó Nualláin, writing in 1988, interpreted the arrangement as originally comprising two uprights and a separate prostrate stone, which would suggest a slightly more complex grouping than a simple pair. Whether the prone northern stone fell over time or was always recumbent is not recorded. A house stands roughly 175 metres to the south-west, close enough to suggest that whoever farms this land has always known the stones were there.

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