Bullaun stone, Ballintombay, Co. Wicklow

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Bullaun stone, Ballintombay, Co. Wicklow

A granite boulder sitting in waterlogged, overgrown ground in County Wicklow carries two oval hollows worn into its upper surface, and that combination of ordinariness and quiet strangeness is exactly what makes bullaun stones so quietly compelling.

These are boulders, usually earthfast and often granite, into which one or more cup-shaped basins have been ground, a process thought to date back through early medieval Christian use and possibly further. The water that collects in the basins was long associated with healing and cursing rituals, and the stones tend to cluster near ecclesiastical or ceremonial sites.

This particular boulder, measuring 1.7 metres along its northeast to southwest axis and rising only half a metre from the ground, sits on low-lying, wooded terrain islanded by small streams that feed into a larger watercourse to the north. The two basins are oval: the larger reaches a maximum diameter of 0.4 metres and a depth of 0.13 metres, while the smaller, positioned just to its southwest, measures 0.28 metres across and 0.075 metres deep. About ten metres to the south lies a ringfort, the circular earthwork enclosure typical of early medieval Irish farmsteads, which gives some sense of the landscape this stone once occupied. Liam Price noted the stone in 1959, and it was recorded as one of a pair; a companion bullaun stone was documented in the same area but has not been relocated in subsequent surveys.

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