Stone sculpture - aniconic (present location)

The National Monuments Service's description

The Killycluggin stone is a fragmentary decorated monolith of Iron Age date that was first brought to general public notice in 1922 (Macalister 1922). At that time the stone was in the same broken state in which it now appears and was situated some 10m SE of a stone circle (CV013-026002-). Macalister recorded local traditions which alleged that the damage to the stone had been carried out in living memory by local farmers in order to remove an obstruction to agricultural activities. Macalister also stated that people of the vicinity had dug around the stone in a vain search for buried treasure and in so doing had apparently destroyed a 'cist burial'. He did not, however, actually see this 'cist burial'. Some thirty years later a second decorated stone fragment, probably a portion of the same monolith, was discovered a short distance down-slope from the main piece. In the early summer of 1974 it was decided to remove the weathered and overgrown fragments to the National Museum of Ireland. A limited excavation was undertaken in its immediate vicinity which revealed that 'the stone stood in a flat-bottomed pit which had been deliberately sunk 80cm into the subsoil to receive it' (Raftery 1978, 51-2). Immediately E of the stone were two pits one of which may be identified as the remains of the cist burial identified by Macalister as it contained tiny fragments of burnt bone (CV013-026003-). The two fragments of the Killycluggin Stone are on display in the Cavan County Museum, Ballyjamesduff, while a replica stands at the cross-roads c. 250m NW of the original site.

The following description of the stone is derived from Raftery (1978, 49-51). The main fragment has been worked to more-or-less cylindrical form on its surviving upper portion. That part which was intended to be below ground level is rough and irregular and projects awkwardly in one direction so that the stone as a whole is crudely L-shaped. The base of the stone slopes obliquely to its vertical axis. The entire upper surface of this stone had been smashed by deliberate and systematic hammering. This destruction continued along one side, whereby the ornament, down to the base of the stone was totally obliterated. The surviving ornament, which comprises combinations of sweeping curves and tight, hair-spring spirals – classic La Tène motifs – is chiseled deeply and crisply into the prepared surface of the stone. The curvilinear patterns have been divided into rectangular panels by straight vertical lines and by horizontal lines at right angles to them which define the basal extremity of the ornamented area. The precise original width of only one such panel can now be ascertained (c. 0.9m wide and 0.75m high) but it may be estimated that four such panels of decoration once existed on the stone giving an original circumference of 3.6m.

The smaller decorated fragment appears to represent a portion of the dome-shaped top of the original monolith and, in this regard, would have resembled that of the best known of the Irish aniconic stones, the stele from Turoe, Co. Galway (GA097-152----). The decoration on this fragment is of two types. Along one edge slight remains of curvilinear patterns, similar to those on the portion just described, survive. Sufficient remains to show that the upper limits of this decoration are defined by a straight line as is the case at the base of the stone, and traces of one of the lines which divide the ornament into vertical, rectangular panels are present here too. The convex upper surface of this fragment is decorated by a series of deeply chiseled, parallel lines which extend across the surface of the stone. The surviving edges of this panel of ornament are defined by a straight line which is incised at an oblique angle to the line which forms the boundary to the zones of curvilinear ornament. Thus there occurs what is now a triangular area, devoid of ornament between the ornament on the apex of the stone and the ornament on the surviving cylindrical part. The two decorated fragments do not join so that neither the original height of the stone nor the precise overall disposition of its ornamentation can now be ascertained. (O’Donovan 1995, no. 93 with further references)

Compiled by: Paul Walsh

Date of upload: 26 February 2014

References

O'Donovan, P.F. 1995 Archaeological inventory of county Cavan. Dublin. Stationery Office.

Raftery, B. 1978 Excavations at Killycluggin, county Cavan. Ulster Journal of Archaeology 41, 49-54.

Macalister, R.A.S. 1922 On a stone with La Tène decoration recently discovered in Co. Cavan. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 52, 113-16.