Standing stone, Derrynafinnia, Co. Kerry

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Derrynafinnia, Co. Kerry

On a south-east-facing slope of rough, heather-clad hill pasture above the valley of the Clydagh River in County Kerry, a single standing stone rises just one and a half metres from the ground.

It is not tall, and it is not ornate. What makes it quietly arresting is the detail that survives at its base: packing-stones, the small rocks wedged around the base of a standing stone during erection to keep it upright, are still visibly exposed. That the effort of the people who raised this stone remains legible in the ground, thousands of years later, lends the site an odd intimacy.

The stone itself is subrectangular in plan, measuring roughly 1.07 metres by 0.48 metres, and it is orientated along an east-west axis, a alignment that may or may not have been deliberate but was common enough among prehistoric monuments to suggest at least the possibility of astronomical or ritual significance. Standing stones of this kind are a characteristic feature of the Kerry landscape, generally attributed to the Bronze Age, though precise dating at any individual site is rarely straightforward without excavation. What this stone is not alone in is its association with other remains: approximately 25 metres to the north-west lies a hut site, the trace of a prehistoric or early medieval dwelling, suggesting that whoever erected or used this stone was living, or had lived, in the immediate area. The relationship between the two features is not documented, but their proximity is enough to suggest that this corner of Derrynafinnia was, at some point, a place where people settled and marked the land.

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