That uncertainty is not rhetorical. When investigators visited the site in 1997, they found the enclosure it was said to belong to, but the stone itself was nowhere to be seen.

The enclosure in question is a recorded prehistoric or early medieval site, the kind of roughly circular earthwork that once defined a farmstead or sheltered a small community. Cross-inscribed stones, where they do survive in such contexts, are often early medieval in character, sometimes marking a boundary, sometimes reflecting a Christianisation of an older, pre-existing place. Whether the Derryronan stone was ever formally documented before the 1997 inspection is unclear; what is known is that its existence rests entirely on local information passed down and repeated, without the stone ever being confirmed by anyone carrying a clipboard. It may have been buried, moved, built into a wall, or it may simply have been overlooked on the day. It may never have existed in the form described.