This earthfast 1.4m square (ish), flat topped boulder contains the deepest bullaun I have ever encountered. It is 30cm in diameter, nearly 60cm deep and like so many of the Carlow bullauns it is conical in cross-section.
The stone, is said to have wart curing properties, to take advantage of which the patient should visit the stone on three occasions. There is an old graveyard nearby and the field is known as the 'Church Field', so an old church probably stood nearby. There were traces of a wall nearby until quite recently, but these have now disappeared.
It was planned to take a new major road through this field, but some geophysics work revealed a lot of activity below the surface and so the site was left alone and the road moved elsewhere. The neighbouring field is known as 'Oldtown' and so there was probably a settlement here too.
All this illustrates quite clearly that when you come to a seemingly isolated monument in a field that what we see now tells so little of a sites heritage.
This is an explanation of (and a bit of a disclaimer for) the coordinates I provide. Where a GPS figure is given this is the master for all other coordinates. According to my Garmin these are quite accurate. Where there is no GPS figure the 6 figure grid reference is master for the others. This may not be very accurate as it could have come from the OS maps and could have been read by eye. Consequently, all other cordinates are going to have inaccuracies. The calculation of Longitude and Latitude uses an algorithm that is not 100% accurate. The long/lat figures are used as a basis for calculating the UTM & ITM coordinates. Consequently, UTM & ITM coordinates are slightly out. UTM is a global coordinate system - Universal Transverse Mercator - that is at the core of the GPS system. ITM is the new coordinate system - Irish Transverse Mercator - that is more accurate and more GPS friendly than the Irish Grid Reference system. This will be used on the next generation of Irish OS maps. |