Standing stone - pair, Coars, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Stone Monuments
On the north-eastern slopes of Keelnagore in County Kerry, two stones occupy a patch of poorly drained pasture, looking out over a wide spread of bog.
One is upright, the other is not, and official maps have only ever acknowledged one of them. That quiet discrepancy is part of what makes the site worth attention.
The standing stone, known in Irish tradition as a gallaun, a term for a single upright megalith of uncertain but generally prehistoric date, rises 2.1 metres from the ground. Squat and broad at the base, measuring 1.4 metres by 1.1 metres, its sides taper gradually upward to a flat top. It is oriented roughly north-north-east to south-south-west, and has been partially absorbed into a field boundary at some point, the kind of casual incorporation that happened to countless prehistoric monuments as later farmers worked around what they could not easily move. Leaning against the south face of this upright stone is a second stone, considerably longer at 2.7 metres, though much thinner. Whether it once stood independently, fell, or was always intended to sit in relation to the first is not recorded. The Ordnance Survey maps mark only a single gallaun here, leaving the recumbent companion unacknowledged in the official cartographic record.