Anomalous stone group, Jamestown, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Stone Monuments
On the north-facing slope of Caher Hill in County Limerick, buried within a conifer plantation, there is a scatter of large stones arranged around an oval depression in the ground that does not appear on any Ordnance Survey historic map.
It has no official classification, no excavation record, and no visibility from aerial imagery taken between 2011 and 2013. What it does have is a name of sorts, passed down through local memory: a ring of stone marking an old burial place.
The site was surveyed in 1999 and recorded by Fiona Rooney for the Archaeological Survey of Ireland, uploaded to the national record in November 2021. What the survey found was an oval-shaped depression measuring 13 metres north to south and 6.2 metres east to west, defined on its southern side by a scarp, a cut edge in the slope roughly 0.8 metres high, which gradually softens as it curves northward. The base of the depression is broadly level but uneven, with sharp undulations of exposed rock beneath a cover of scutch grass. Five substantial stones were recorded: four lying flat and one standing upright on the western side at the base of the scarp, measuring a metre high and a metre wide. The stone at the south-east is noted as having a curious shape at its northern end, though the survey stops short of interpreting it. A possible burial mound lies 280 metres to the north, recorded separately under the national monuments register, and its proximity adds a layer of quiet suggestiveness to an already ambiguous grouping.
Reaching the site requires navigating into a working or established conifer plantation, so conditions underfoot are likely to be rough and the canopy dense. Because the depression and its stones left no trace on satellite orthoimagery from the early 2010s, ground-level observation is the only way to read the site properly. A visitor armed with the survey sketch plan would be looking for the scarp line first, then working around the perimeter to locate the five stones, paying particular attention to the upright slab on the western edge and the shaped stone to the south-east. The site carries no interpretive signage and no formal public access, but it sits within a broader landscape on Caher Hill where the archaeology rewards careful, unhurried attention.