Cup-Marked Stone (lost): OS Grid Reference – SG 21640 43035
Also Known as:
- Ballykean Stone A (Kinihan 1884)
Archaeology & History
This is one of at least fourteen petroglyphs in this parish that have been either lost or destroyed since their initial description in the 19th century. First noticed by a Mr Hugh Jones of Ballykean House, it was the northernmost carving in the cluster. When the Archaeological Survey of Ireland looked for the carving in 1990 it could not be located—although they did note a stone of similar size in the field boundary to the north-east, but could find no cup-marks on it.
When George Kinihan (1884) described the stone, he told it to be a block of granite, “about 5 feet by 5.3 feet, and standing 3.3 feet high” in a field known as the Fort Field (although there are no remains of a fort here). Kinihan took a rubbing of the carving, which highlighted eleven cup-marks on its upper surface, as illustrated here. More recently, in Corlett’s (2014) rock art survey, he told that there were “several large dumps of granite boulders” north of the field and wondered whether these might be where this, and the other stones, had been moved. Does anyone know…?
References:
- Corlett, Christiaan, Inscribing the Landscape: The Rock Art of South Leinster, Wordwell: Dublin 2014.
- Kinihan, George H., “Proceedings: Cup-marked and Inscribed Stones in the Counties of Wicklow and Wexford”, in Journal Royal Society Antiquaries Ireland, (4th series) volume 6, 1884.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian
