Mass-rocks are among the more quietly charged survivals of the Penal era in Ireland, the period from the late seventeenth century into the eighteenth when Catholic worship was criminalised under a series of laws that barred priests from practising and Catholics from building churches. Congregations gathered instead in remote or sheltered spots, often in upland terrain or tucked against field boundaries, and a suitable flat stone would be pressed into service as a makeshift altar. The practice left behind a scattered, unofficial archaeology across the Irish landscape, one that rarely drew the attention of formal record-keepers at the time precisely because its whole point was concealment.