It has been removed, leaving behind only a brief paper trace of what once stood in a field of pasture.

What that trace records is precise enough to conjure the stone clearly. Writing in 1939, researcher Hartnett described a grey sandstone monolith standing obliquely, meaning it leaned rather than stood plumb vertical, measuring eighty-four inches in height and roughly ten by forty-six inches in cross-section. That is a substantial slab, tall enough to be conspicuous in an open field, and its slightly tilted posture would have given it a particular presence. Standing stones of this kind are among the most common prehistoric monuments in Ireland, typically dating from the Bronze Age, though their precise purpose remains debated; they may have marked boundaries, burial sites, or astronomical alignments. What makes the Ballygirriha example quietly curious is that it was already absent from the Ordnance Survey's six-inch mapping of 1842, suggesting it was either missed by the surveyors, not yet known to them, or else recorded under different circumstances elsewhere. Its eventual removal from the site means that even the oblique silhouette Hartnett documented is now gone entirely, surviving only in a measurement and a brief description.