DESIGNS CARVED ONTO a stone in Co Limerick thousands of years ago have been discovered at a stone circle near Lough Gur.
A photographer and researcher with extensive experience capturing prehistoric art said the previously unrevealed megalithic art was discovered on a stone covered in moss until recently.
Ken Williams said he was in the area last week and found that this stone now had visible carvings. The find was “well outside where you’d expect to see to find these type of carvings”.
“There’s only one other carved stone that’s carved in this similar manner in Munster and that’s off the coast of Cork on Clare Island,” Williams told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
He has two decades of experience photographing megalithic art so he said he was “quite familiar” with the different types of carving on stones.
“I was there [at Lough Gur] in about 2020 and I noticed a shape on the side of the stone, but the back of the stone was covered in moss at that stage and I wasn’t too sure,” he said.
“It looked a bit too eroded or weathered to be sure whether it was actually artificial or not, so I left it at that until I went back this time.
“Probably a combination of heat and people climbing over the stones maybe, a lot of the moss was gone on the back of the stone and using lighting then I was able to see that there’s quite a lot of carving on the back of the stone and on both sides, which is quite unusual.”
He added that the find is “great for Lough Gur”. “It really adds to the story of the place.”
“This type of megalithic art is more common up in the Boyne Valley so the passage tombs people would know – Newgrange and Dowth – they have these kind of carvings,” Williams said.
“There’s concentric circles and there’s arcs and all different kind of oval shapes and all that so it’s very, very consistent with passage tomb art.”
He said the meaning of the symbols have long been speculated, but it’s mostly abstract shapes like spirals and zig zags.
The stone with the art is part of a wider stone circle so it can’t easily be removed and put in a museum.
Williams said the carvings appear to continue below the ground so the main threat to keeping it preserved “would be people walking on it or climbing on it”.
“It survived thousands of years. Some of it is quite weathered, so we do know that it’s ancient because they are quite weathered on the sides in particular.
“The main thing is that people don’t climb over stones or sit on them or have a picnic on them or anything like that because that will wear them away.”
The area with the stone circle at Lough Gur is open to the public. Williams said it can be difficult to identify the art, but shining a torch can help to illuminate it especially in the evening time.
In 2016, Williams worked with archaeologists to expose the extent of megalithic designs on a stone at the notorious Hellfire Club in Dublin.
Project leader Neil Jackman told The Journal at the time that it was “incredible luck” the discovery was made.
In a similar situation to the recent discovery at the stone circle in Co Limerick, motifs-bearing stone at Montpelier Hill had been hiding in plain sight to visitors over the years.
It was partially visible in the hollow of what remains of the burial mound but much of the slab of igneous rock was buried beneath the surface. It had suffered much wear and tear over the decades, exposed to both the elements and revellers at the site.
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