The one in a pasture field at Fuhur, in County Cork, does something rather different. Barely above knee height at just over a metre tall, it is almost square in plan and rectangular in section, tapering only slightly as it rises, more like a stubby post than a monument. That near-perfect squareness is quietly unusual; the typical standing stone is a slab, chosen or shaped for its narrow profile. Whatever logic guided the selection of this particular stone, it does not follow the obvious template.

The stone sits near the northern edge of an east-west terrace on a north-facing slope, positioned so that it looks out across the valley towards Miskish Mountain, the rugged ridge that runs through the Beara Peninsula. Its orientation runs ENE to WSW, a detail that may or may not be deliberate, since many standing stones across Cork and Kerry appear to have been set with some awareness of solar or lunar alignments, though whether that applies here is unknown. Standing stones as a class are among the most enigmatic of Irish prehistoric monuments. They served many possible purposes, including territorial markers, assembly points, or memorials, and in most cases the archaeological record offers no firm answer. The Fuhur stone, modest and four-square in a grass field, is no exception to that general silence.