What is recorded here

On a drumlin above Bantry, a thin schist pillar still stands where a monastery may have fallen to Viking swords. Its faces carry a raven dropping bread to starving hermits and a currach cutting through a sea of crosses, while interlocked sheep horns watch the sway of the grass. The lost monastery may have been the Church of the Romans, but the stone keeps both memories: worship and voyage, hunger and rescue, all carved before the arms of its cross broke away.

In tillage, on gentle SE-facing slope. Stone (H 3.4m; 0.75m x 0.4m) is rectangular in plan and section, long axis ENE-WSW. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 4: North Cork' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2000). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload/revision: 14 January 2009

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