Standing stone, Mahanagh, Co. Cork

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Mahanagh, Co. Cork

In Mahanagh townland, County Cork, a standing stone has quietly gone missing from its recorded position.

Not lost to time, exactly, but moved, probably within living memory, and its current whereabouts remain a matter of educated guesswork. A stone that was once a fixed point in the landscape is now a question mark near a field boundary.

The stone belongs to a group of four monuments known locally as dallans, a term used in Irish archaeology for tall, slab-like standing stones, often of early medieval date, though the precise origins of the Mahanagh examples are not recorded. Researcher Bowman, writing in 2000, documented all four on land then belonging to a Mr. O'Reilly, and described this particular stone as sitting roughly 366 metres west of the first in the group. At the time of recording it stood about 0.91 metres high and measured an unusually generous 3.4 metres in girth, making it a squat but substantial presence. At some point after that description was set down, the stone was shifted from its original spot. The landowner was able to point out where it had stood, and there is a possibility that a stone now lying near the northern boundary of the same field is the same one, toppled or repositioned rather than lost entirely.

The uncertainty around this stone is itself part of what makes it worth noting. Three companion dallans remain in the same townland, and the group as a whole represents a quiet concentration of early monumental stonework in this corner of Cork. Whether this particular stone is the recumbent one near the field edge, or whether it has disappeared more thoroughly, is something only closer inspection on the ground could resolve.

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