Cairn - radial-stone cairn, Rusheen, Co. Cork

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Cairns

Cairn – radial-stone cairn, Rusheen, Co. Cork

Two prehistoric cairns in a woodland copse at Rusheen, County Cork, are joined together by a narrow stone causeway in a way that gives the whole arrangement, viewed from above, the unmistakable outline of a pair of spectacles.

It is an unusual configuration in Irish prehistory, and the comparison is not fanciful; the ground plan genuinely resembles two lenses connected at the bridge.

The more southerly of the two cairns is also the better preserved. Nineteen stones are set radially, that is, arranged like the spokes of a wheel pointing outward from a central mass, protruding from the low mound beneath them. The cairn itself survives to a maximum height of about half a metre, and the individual stones rise between roughly twenty and sixty-five centimetres above its surface. A causeway-like feature, only half a metre wide and three metres long, extends from the north-western edge of this cairn to connect it with its companion. Two upright stones, each reaching close to the height of the tallest radial stones, protrude from the north-western edge of this linking section. The whole structure sits on a flat terrace partway down a gentle south-facing slope, sheltered within a small copse of trees. Radial-stone cairns are a recognised monument type in Cork and Kerry, though the paired arrangement here, with its causeway connection, is a particularly distinctive variant.

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