Standing stone

The National Monuments Service's description

The monument is situated on a terrace on a generally E-facing slope that overlooks the small valley that opens out on the seashore at Portlea (known locally as ‘Portle’). It stands immediately inside the roadside wall on the western side of the Lighthouse Road and is only 75m from southern boundary of the townland. The surrounding field surface is uneven pasture with clear traces of former cultivation ridges, although the site of the stone itself is fairly level and up to 1m above the adjoining road. Description: It comprises a squat, rectangular block of unhewn conglomerate-like rock (L 1m × Wth 0.7m × H 1.35m max. on its north-western side), its long axis running NNE–SSW. The whole surface, including its roughly flat top, is purplish in colour and speckled with lichens. It does not appear to be deeply bedded in the ground as small exposures of bedrock are visible in the field surface immediately to NW and N. Two other amorphous blocks of similar rock type lie on the roadside verge c. 10–20m to SE, but neither are purposely set. Despite Westropp’s clear description of its location (1911a, 16–17, 19), this standing stone has been recurrently misplaced on the Ordnance Survey maps (see MA085-152----1).

The above description is derived from: New Survey of Clare Island. Volume 5: Archaeology. Edited by Paul Gosling, Conleth Manning and John Waddell. (Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. 2007). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated.

Date of upload: 29 November 2018

References

Gosling, P., Manning, C. and Waddell, J. (eds.) 2007 New Survey of Clare Island, Volume 5: Archaeology. Dublin, Royal Irish Academy.

Westropp, T.J. 1911 Clare Island survey: history and archaeology. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 31, Section 1, Part 2, 1-78.