On the south-eastern foothills of Forth Mountain in County Wexford, a slate monolith once rose 2.2 metres from the tip of a broad ridge running roughly north-west to south-east. Aligned along a SSE-NNW axis, it had the proportions of a standing stone, the setting of one, and the quiet authority of ancient prehistory. But a closer look told a different story: two perforations bored near the top, a third begun but never finished near the base. It was, in all likelihood, an unfinished gatepost, the kind of functional agricultural upright that farmers across Ireland once quarried and shaped from local stone for hanging field gates.

The stone was slate, with a neat rectangular cross-section measuring 0.7 metres by 0.2 metres, which is more consistent with a worked post than with the rougher, more imposing profiles of genuine prehistoric monuments. The unfinished perforation near the base is particularly telling: whoever was cutting the fixing holes simply stopped, for reasons now unknown, leaving behind an object caught between two identities. Whether it was abandoned due to a flaw in the stone, a change of plan, or some more mundane interruption, it was never put to use as a gate support. Instead it stood on its spur above Forth Commons, plausibly mistaken by passers-by for something far older, until sometime after 1989, when it was removed. It no longer exists on site.