Standing stone, Kilclogh, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
A standing stone that appears on no Ordnance Survey map from the nineteenth or early twentieth century is already an oddity.
Most prehistoric uprights, however modest, earned at least a dot on the 1842 or 1904 six-inch surveys. The stone at Kilclogh, in Mid Cork, was either overlooked by the surveyors or had already fallen by the time they passed through, leaving it to sit outside the documentary record until it was eventually identified and catalogued.
The stone itself is relatively small, standing just 0.75 metres high, with a roughly rectangular cross-section measuring 0.46 metres by 0.14 metres. Its long axis runs east to west, a detail that may or may not be meaningful; some standing stones are thought to have been deliberately oriented, though for a stone this size no firm conclusions should be drawn. It sits in rough grazing land, the kind of marginal ground that often preserves ancient features simply because nobody has had reason to plough or develop it. Around 1972 the stone was knocked over by cattle and subsequently re-erected, which means its current position, while presumably close to the original, carries the slight uncertainty that any re-erection introduces. Standing stones, as a class of monument, are among the most enigmatic in the Irish landscape; they can date anywhere from the Neolithic through to the early medieval period, and their original purposes, whether territorial markers, memorial stones, or something else entirely, remain largely a matter of informed speculation.