About 500 metres from the Loughmoney court tomb is this tall standing stone, in a corner of a private field, next to the dry stone wall.
It's about 3.5 metres tall, it leans to the southwest by about 10 degrees, but the most strange thing of all is that it is tied to a nearby tree with a long length of steel wire. This support must have been placed in site many many years before, because the tree has absorbed and incorporated in its bark the wire around it.
UPDATE: May 30th, 2019 - A new visit to this stone, that is weird in that it is secured to a nearby tree with a long length of metal wire. This was done when the tree was much younger, and now that it's older the wire has been absorbed by the tree.
I think that the idea of the steel wire was to support the stone and prevent it from falling, but its lean isn't so high to threaten its stability.
The stone has a triangular section, it's 2.64 metres tall and it's about 60 centimetres on each side.
It leans to the southwest (230°) by about 8°, as I said not too high a lean.
At the feet of the stone, to the northwest, there's a small quartzite stone that I missed the time before, or it has been moved here later.
The first three photos in this page are from the visit in 2003, the remaining nine photos are from the visit in 2019.
|