That small act of disturbance and repair captures something of the object's whole history: a thing moved, adapted, returned to a place it was never officially meant to occupy.

Mass rocks are among the more poignant survivals of post-Reformation Ireland. During the Penal Laws, which broadly spanned the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Catholic worship was outlawed or severely restricted, and priests who continued to celebrate Mass did so in secret, outdoors, using whatever flat surface the landscape offered. A suitably shaped rock, often set against a natural outcrop for shelter or concealment, served as an improvised altar. The Farahy example sits immediately to the north-east of a natural limestone outcrop that rises to around two metres, which would have provided both a degree of cover and a ready-made backdrop. The limestone block itself, rectangular and workable in form, fits the pattern of such sites across Munster and beyond. That it is now upturned, the presumed altar surface no longer facing skyward, is a quiet irony for a place whose original function depended on orientation and presence.