At Balregan in County Louth, a standing stone, the kind of large upright prehistoric marker erected across Ireland from the Neolithic period onward, is known to have existed but has left nothing behind. No stump, no socket, no displaced slab. Whatever once stood here is simply gone.

The stone's sole documentary trace comes from Thomas Wright, who noted it in 1758, describing it as a monumental pillar. That phrase suggests something of considerable size and presence, the sort of stone that would have been visible at a distance and likely served as a waymarker or ritual landmark in the prehistoric landscape. Wright recorded it with enough confidence to include it in a plate illustration, which makes the total disappearance all the more curious. Stones of this kind were sometimes broken up for building material, absorbed into field walls, or buried during land improvement, and any of those fates could account for the silence that followed Wright's observation.