Bullaun stone, Baile Mhic Íre, Co. Cork

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Holy Sites & Wells

Bullaun stone, Baile Mhic Íre, Co. Cork

Along a roadside in Baile Mhic Íre, a small block of sandstone once sat quietly in a field fence, its most distinctive feature a deliberate circular hollow worn or carved into its flat upper surface.

That hollow is what makes it a bullaun stone, a type of ancient stone with a cup-shaped depression that appears at early ecclesiastical sites and in field boundaries across Ireland. Their precise function remains debated; some were likely used for grinding, others are associated with ritual or votive practice, and many acquired later folklore connecting them to cursing, healing, or the turning of water to cure ailments.

This particular example, an irregular sandstone block measuring roughly half a metre by 45 centimetres, carries a single hollow about 35 centimetres in diameter and 7 centimetres deep. It is a modest object by any measure, though its proportions are fairly typical of the type. At some point after it was recorded in its roadside location it was removed and passed into private possession, which means it has effectively vanished from public view. The precise circumstances of its removal are not recorded, but the outcome is a familiar one in the story of small portable antiquities: an object that once sat in the landscape, findable and visible, is now held somewhere unknown.

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