The cupmarked stone at Ballyvireen in County Cork vanished rather more abruptly. Around 1985, a large stone slab bearing many deeply inscribed cup-marks, which had stood in open pasture overlooking the Roury river, was broken up and buried. It survives now only in description.

Cup-marks are among the most widespread and least understood features of prehistoric stone carving in Ireland and across northern Europe. They are exactly what the name suggests: shallow, roughly circular depressions ground or pecked into the surface of a rock, sometimes appearing singly, sometimes in dense clusters. Their purpose remains genuinely unclear, with interpretations ranging from ritual or astronomical markers to boundary indicators or simple craft practices. What Roberts recorded in 1985, just before the stone's destruction, was a slab with numerous such marks, deeply cut, set in farmland with a clear eastward prospect down towards the river. That combination, a prominent natural position, a substantial slab, and a concentration of markings, is typical of prehistoric sites elsewhere in Munster, even if this particular example can no longer be examined.