Standing stone, Kilmona, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
On a north-west-facing slope in the Kilmona townland of mid Cork, there is a field where a standing stone once stood, and then did not.
The stone does not appear on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of 1842 or 1904, yet by 1937 it had been recorded on a later edition of the same series. At some point after that, it was removed entirely, leaving no visible trace at the surface. What makes this particular absence quietly interesting is that sequence: unrecorded through the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, briefly acknowledged on a single map, then gone.
Standing stones are among the most difficult monument types to date or interpret with confidence. They were erected across many different periods, from the Neolithic through to the early medieval era, and their original purposes remain largely speculative, ranging from territorial markers to burial indicators to components of now-lost ceremonial landscapes. The Kilmona example passed through the historical record so briefly that almost nothing is known about it beyond its approximate location and orientation. Whether it disappeared through agricultural clearance, deliberate removal, or some other cause is unrecorded. The pasture field on that north-west-facing slope gives no indication today that anything was ever there.
