Near Ballynahown in County Westmeath, a bullaun stone, a boulder or slab bearing one or more rounded, cup-like depressions ground into its surface, was recorded in careful detail in 1979 and then, by 1982, was simply gone. The depressions had been measured: the westernmost was 30 centimetres wide and 8 centimetres deep, the middle one 25 centimetres in diameter and 6.5 centimetres deep, and the easternmost, partly covered by a thin sod, 32 centimetres in diameter and 10 centimetres deep. That eastern depression lacked the reddened appearance of the other two, a detail that might have told us something about patterns of use or weathering, had anyone had the chance to study it further.

The stone sat on the northern edge of what is now reclaimed grassland, on a low north-east facing slope beside poorly drained ground, with a stream roughly 50 metres to the north-north-east. It was one of at least three bullaun stones in close proximity in this part of Westmeath; another lies 32 metres to the east, and a third some 460 metres to the south-south-east, suggesting the area once held some significance, religious, ritual, or otherwise, that placed these carved stones in a loose cluster across the landscape. Ballynahown Court stands about 610 metres to the east. When surveyors returned to the site in 1982, the stone could not be found, and the most plausible explanation was that land reclamation works carried out in the field had caused it to be moved, buried, or broken up entirely. It is a small, quiet loss, the kind that leaves only measurements behind.