Some places earn their curiosity not from what survives but from what has quietly disappeared. At Ballyboy in County Waterford, there was once a bullaun stone, a large boulder or slab bearing one or more deliberately hollowed cup-shaped depressions, the purpose of which remains debated among archaeologists. These stones are found across Ireland and are often associated with early Christian sites or ancient ritual practice, though their precise origins and uses are rarely straightforward. The Ballyboy example was known locally and sat on wet ground beside a stream, the kind of marginal, in-between landscape that bullaun stones frequently seem to occupy.

The stone was recorded by Power in 1952, by which point it was already a known local feature rather than an actively studied monument. At some point after that record was made, the surrounding land was drained and reclaimed, a process common throughout rural Ireland during the twentieth century as farmers improved low-lying fields that had previously been too waterlogged to cultivate. The stream-side ground where the stone once sat was absorbed into the reclaimed landscape, and the bullaun stone itself was lost in the process. Whether it was buried, moved, or broken up is not recorded.