At Drominycarra in County Limerick, the record notes a standing stone that no longer stands. A roughly 1.5-metre-tall upright stone, the kind of prehistoric marker that once punctuated the Irish landscape in its thousands, was removed from this spot around 1985. What remains is level pasture with moderate views in all directions, and an entry in the Sites and Monuments Record that amounts to a kind of obituary.

Standing stones are among the most enigmatic monuments left by prehistoric communities in Ireland. Erected during the Bronze Age in most cases, they served purposes that are still debated, ranging from territorial markers to ritual focal points, astronomical indicators to burial memorials. This particular example sat in open, flat ground in County Limerick, a setting that would have given it reasonable visibility across the surrounding landscape. Approximately 200 metres to the north-west lies a recorded enclosure, suggesting the stone was not entirely isolated but part of a broader pattern of activity in the area. The Archaeological Survey of Ireland visited the site in 2000 and found no surface remains whatsoever. A subsequent check of Google Earth imagery taken on 28 June 2018 confirmed the same: nothing visible. The removal, attributed to local information rather than any formal documentation, appears to have been thorough.

There is, practically speaking, nothing to see at Drominycarra. The coordinates place you in ordinary farmland, and the field gives no hint of what it once contained. That absence is, in its own way, the point. The site is a reminder that the attrition of the archaeological record is ongoing and often quiet, a stone shifted during field clearance, no announcement made, no replacement offered. Anyone with an interest in how these monuments disappear, and in the bureaucratic effort to track even what is lost, can find the record compiled by Martin Fitzpatrick and uploaded in August 2020 through the National Monuments Service. The enclosure to the north-west remains a recorded feature, though access to any agricultural land in Ireland requires landowner permission.