Standing stone, Fornaght, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
A standing stone rising 1.6 metres from a field in Fornaght, County Cork, managed to evade the attention of the Ordnance Survey not once but twice, appearing on neither the 1842 nor the 1903 six-inch maps.
That is a curious oversight for a stone that has presumably occupied the same patch of pasture for several thousand years, and it raises the quiet question of how many other prehistoric markers slipped through the net of those otherwise meticulous surveys.
The stone itself is relatively slender, measuring roughly 0.94 metres across and only 0.18 metres in depth, giving it a subrectangular profile. Its long axis runs ENE to WSW, an orientation that may or may not be deliberate but is worth noting given that many Irish standing stones appear to have been positioned with some awareness of solar or lunar alignments, though the evidence for any specific intention here is absent. What is clear is that it does not stand alone in the landscape: a second standing stone lies approximately 50 metres to the northwest, suggesting that the two were either placed in relation to each other or that this corner of mid Cork was considered significant ground during the prehistoric period when such stones were typically erected. Paired or grouped standing stones are known from elsewhere in Ireland, sometimes associated with burial or territorial marking, though their exact function remains genuinely uncertain.