The McMahons Stone, inauguration site in County Monaghan

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What is recorded here

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Located at the summit of and at the centre of the E-W drumlin ridge known as the Hill of Leck. The MacMahon chiefs were inaugurated at this location until the seventeenth century, and it is described on an Ulster map made in 1609 as ‘Mullagh-lest (leach?), so called of a stone there, on which McMahon is made’ (Hamilton 1912, 64-5). It is known in the folk tradition, and a sketch of a spherical stone is provided (IFC: (953) 159-60: https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes ). The stone was said to have the imprint of a foot, which the landowner obliterated in 1809, and the remains of the stone were removed after 1845 (ibid.; Shirley 1879, 71). It is described as being ‘about 12 feet by 10 feet and about 3 feet high (dims c. 3.65m x c. 3m; H 0.9m), but other measurements of ‘5 feet x 4 feet and 3 feet high (dims c. 1.5m x 1.2m; H c. 0.9m) are also recorded (IFC: (953) 212-3). The location of the ‘MacMahons Stone’ is represented on the 1834 edition of the OS 6-inch map, but it was removed later in the 19th century (Shirley 1879, 71).

From the National Monuments Service (Archaeological Survey of Ireland) record MO013-017

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Photo credits

Kenneth Allen, Geograph · Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
Maker not stated on source page, www.pinterest.com
Walking with a phone, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
Maker not stated on source page, www.smithsonianmag.com
Maker not stated on source page, ms.fusedlearning.com

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