A standing stone near Coollicka in County Cork appeared on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1939, marked plainly as a single upright stone in pasture, yet it was absent from the equivalent maps of 1842 and 1904. Whether it was simply missed by earlier surveyors, or whether it had been re-erected or first raised sometime in the intervening decades, is not recorded. Either way, it was there in 1939, and then, at some point after that, it was gone.

Standing stones, single upright slabs of rock set into the ground, are among the most common yet least understood prehistoric monuments in Ireland. Their purposes remain debated; some are associated with burials, others may have marked boundaries, trackways, or sites of ritual significance. In Cork alone there are hundreds of recorded examples, many still in place after millennia. The Coollicka stone was not among the survivors. It has since been removed, leaving no visible trace at ground level. The gap in the cartographic record makes it impossible to say with certainty how old it was, or indeed how long it had stood before someone decided to take it down.