Bullaun stone, Laragh, Co. Wicklow

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Holy Sites & Wells

Bullaun stone, Laragh, Co. Wicklow

On a south-facing slope above the Avonmore River near Laragh, a granite boulder sits quietly in what was recently a forestry plantation.

It would be easy to walk past it, half-sod-covered at one end and only about 45 centimetres clear of the ground at its southern face. What makes it worth a second look are two smooth, deliberately carved depressions worn into its flat upper surface, placed side by side with roughly ten centimetres of stone between them.

This is a bullaun stone, a type of prehistoric or early medieval rock feature found across Ireland, typically consisting of one or more rounded basins ground or pecked into a larger boulder. Their precise function is debated; some are associated with early Christian sites and were used for grinding, others accumulated folklore around curative or ritual properties, with the collected rainwater sometimes thought to have healing significance. The Laragh example measures 1.9 metres along its east-west axis and about 1.4 metres across. Its two basins are notably different in size: the larger is a near-circular bowl roughly 34 by 30 centimetres across and up to 15 centimetres deep, while the smaller basin to the west measures 28 by 26 centimetres and is only around 7 centimetres deep. The fact that one basin is considerably shallower than the other may suggest different phases of use, different purposes, or simply uneven wear over a very long period of time. The stone is granite, which makes the labour involved in forming those smooth, curved hollows all the more striking.

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