Stone row, Doire Na Sagart, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
On a spur of rough mountain land above the Owengarve River valley in mid Cork, three standing stones have been arranged in a line, east to west, for reasons nobody now fully understands.
Stone rows, which typically date to the Bronze Age, are found across the uplands of Munster in considerable numbers, yet each one sits in its landscape with an air of quiet stubbornness, declining to explain itself. This example at Doire Na Sagart, whose name translates roughly as the oak wood of the priest, extends 6.3 metres in overall length and looks out southward over the valley below.
The three stones vary considerably in character. The easternmost is the tallest, standing 1.8 metres high, and is relatively slender in profile. Moving south-west by 1.2 metres, the middle stone has shifted over time, leaning markedly to the north, possibly displaced from its original position; if it were restored to upright, it would stand around 1.5 metres. The westernmost stone, a further 3.7 metres along the alignment, is the shortest of the three at 0.8 metres and also the broadest. The arrangement was catalogued by the researcher S. O Nualláin in 1988, whose survey of Cork stone rows remains a key reference for sites of this type. The word "probable" in the formal description is itself worth noting: even after fieldwork, archaeologists leave room for doubt about whether a loose grouping of stones represents deliberate human arrangement or the slow drift of geology and time.