Somewhere in Ballymore Eustace, a large stone sits roughly 270 metres from where it was supposed to be. That displacement, modest in distance but significant in archaeological terms, is the quiet puzzle at the centre of this site. The stone in question is a bullaun stone, a type of boulder or outcrop bearing one or more deliberately carved circular depressions, bowl-shaped hollows ground into the rock surface. Bullaun stones are associated across Ireland with early Christian and pre-Christian practice; the hollows were sometimes used for grinding, sometimes linked to votive ritual, and the water that collects in them was often considered to have curative properties.

The original position of this particular stone was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map in its 1939 to 1940 edition, which means that at some point after that survey, the stone was physically moved to a location approximately 270 metres to the south-east. The reasons for such relocations vary; agricultural clearance, construction work, or simple convenience have all been responsible for shifting ancient stones across the Irish landscape over the decades. What the 1939 to 1940 map preserves, in this case, is a snapshot of where the stone stood before that intervention, making the original location a kind of archaeological ghost site, a place defined now by an absence rather than a presence.