Standing stone, Termons, Co. Kerry

The stone, a gallaun, which is the Irish term for a single upright standing stone, was recorded on the second edition of the Ordnance Survey map, but at some point during the 1980s it was apparently removed. No visible trace remains.

The loss is quiet but telling. A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, compiling their archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula for Cork University Press in 1996, noted the absence and attributed the removal to local information rather than any documented act. The site at Termons sits in farmland that inclines southward toward Lough Currane, a landscape that would have given any standing stone a long, open sightline across the water. Galláin of this kind are found throughout Kerry and the wider west of Ireland, often associated with prehistoric ritual, boundary marking, or burial, though the specific purpose of any individual stone is rarely certain. Whatever this one meant to the people who erected it, its presence was substantial enough to be mapped, and its absence went unrecorded until archaeologists came looking.