As one of my efforts to improve the mapping of heritage features in Ireland, i started a proposal to be able to map mass rocks recently. I thought they were only “a thing” in Ireland until yesterday, when my aunt in Germany shared a photograph of the hilltop of the Sonnenstein on WhatsApp. In front of the massive cross that she probably tried to take the picture of, I discovered a boulder that looked suspiciously like a mass rock, but I could find no information online about it and it is only mapped as natural=stone. The area around that hill is a Catholic enclave in what is really core Lutheran country. So I sent an email to the tourism office of that parish/ area, asking whether they knew if it was a mass rock (which I translated as Altarstein in my email). I just got a reply from them (I’m still waiting to hear back about an email I sent 3 weeks ago to the Bishop of Ossory about holy wells) today and my suspicion was confirmed. It was put there in the 1950s (so under communist rule, when religion was frowned upon, to say the least) and is still used.

I’m very excited and I hope my proposal gets approved, so I can map this mass rock.