Laois Standing Stones

 Laois Standing Stones

Standing Stones are generally regarded as Bronze Age field monuments. Occasionally a few are believed to date to the later Iron Age period.

Standing Stone at Skirk, Laois

In Laois we have very few remaining Standing Stones although there are many references to places and areas where they were once located. 

Many have long since been knocked over or removed from the visible landscape around us today.

Standing Stone at Clonfertmulloe, Laois

The ancient Stones are a bit of a mystery as they predate historic record. There are no written records which describe their function and there are no tales which have survived handed down in oral tradition from the Bronze Age. 

This was a time when it's likely that language may well have been different from anything which survives today from Old Irish.

Standing Stone at Clopook, Laois

The enigmatic stones may have served as boundary markers or territorial signs. 

They may also have possibly been wayside markers on ancient routes or places for small gatherings. Perhaps they marked a place of ritual or maybe were associated with a nearby burial. 

It's impossible to know exactly what they signified and although while the overriding opinion seems to accept them as ancient boundary markers we will never know for sure and indeed they may have served several different functions.

Recumbent and fallen former Standing Stone at Skirk, Laois. Perhaps it was knocked over by Cattle using it as a scratching post.

 

 

There are several standing stones dotted about in Laois. Some I have yet to visit and are recorded lying in what is now deep vegetation and forestry.

 

Little respect was paid to these ancient monuments of our forefathers and mothers in the County and we have lost many of the Stones forever.

 

A Kildare Standing Stone with Laois associations, Mullaghmast Long Stone is pictured below.

 

Many Standing Stones were destroyed clearing fields for tillage and farming. People paid little attention to them and were busy enough trying to survive on a day to day basis. 

There was little need for Archaeology or Heritage information in days of old. Most were probably seen as nothing other than an awkward obstacle to a horse and plough, ripe for tearing from the soil to make ploughing the field a little easier.

I've included a few photographs of some of the Standing Stones found in Laois. Although none are particularly striking visually I like to think that they are nonetheless hugely important monuments.

Below are three photographs of Gortnaglogh Standing Stone. 

It was also called the Mass Stone and it is believed that Mass was held at this spot during the repressive times of the Penal Laws in Ireland.

Priests were often hunted down and murdered for ministering to their flocks during the era of the Penal Laws.

The Stones exist in the landscape of Laois and are representative of an enigmatic Bronze Age farming presence which existed as far back as 4,500 years ago. A simple and yet wonderous relic that these ancient farming peoples left behind.

 Below is The Fiddlers Rock - A large quartzite Standing Stone at Glenafelly in the Slieve Bloom Mountains. Not quite Laois it's just across the border in Offaly. 

As quartzite doesn't occur naturally in the Slieve Bloom mountains this rock is believed to be a glacial "Erratic" carried along by a glacier during the last Ice age and presumably thousands of years later placed into an upright position by human hands.

Keep the wheels turning.........