The standing stone at Ballincrokig, in County Cork, belongs firmly to the second category. It lies somewhere in pasture, with no visible surface trace remaining, which is itself a quietly telling detail. The stone has not merely been forgotten; it has been swallowed entirely, whether by subsidence, soil accumulation, agricultural clearance, or some combination of all three.

What makes the site a little more intriguing is that it was not alone. The Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1842 records a similar stone in a field to the south, suggesting that the Ballincrokig area once held at least a pair of these monuments. Standing stones, which are single upright blocks of rock set deliberately into the ground, are among the most common yet least understood prehistoric monuments in Ireland. Their purposes remain debated, ranging from burial markers to territorial indicators to elements of astronomical alignment, and they appear throughout Cork in considerable numbers. Whether the two stones at Ballincrokig were related in function, whether they formed part of a deliberate arrangement, is now very difficult to say. The southern stone carries its own separate record, and both have effectively vanished from view.

For anyone with an interest in this corner of Cork, the 1842 OS six-inch map remains the clearest indication that something was once here. The landscape itself offers nothing to the eye.