Rock art (present location) in Rathquarter

This stone was discovered in the corner of an outbuilding attached to the former Cloverhill school in the townland of Knockshammer or Cloverhill. It was removed from the building and placed in Sligo County Museum (pers. comm. M.A. Timoney). The stone (0.84m x 0.27m by 0.15m thick) is is decorated on two opposing faces. The carvings were partly truncated when the stone was reworked for use as a quoin. Face 1: This has three sets of motifs, two double rings one with an intenal small ring like a cup and between them, a cup-and-ring motif. Face 2: This has the remains of a double ring, a single ring and a cup-and-ring motif. The original provenance of the stone is unknown but it may be that referred to by R.A.S. Macalister in a paer on Bronze-Age sculpture in Ireland (Breuil and Macalister 1921-4, 5, fn 1). In a footnote in the paper he records as follows: ‘The field on the side of the road opposite to that containing the Clover Hill burial-chamber contains a large number of rough boulders, not artificially arranged, but tending to surround a mound on top of which is a small tumulus. On one of these boulders M. l'Abbe Breuil detected a group of concentric circles, pocked., R.A.S.M.’ It is possible that one or more of the boulders was used as a source of stone when the building was erected. (Timoney 2002c, 140, plate a) Compiled by: Paul Walsh Date of upload: 29 August 2014

This rock art is likely from the Neolithic or Bronze Age period, based on the style and context of similar Irish examples. Its meaning is unclear, but such stones may have had ritual, territorial, or symbolic significance.