That kind of placement was deliberate. Standing stones, which were typically erected during the Bronze Age as markers, boundary indicators, or monuments of uncertain ritual purpose, tend to favour elevated ground, and the one at Booladurragha was no exception. What makes this particular spot unusual is not what remains, but what was removed.

Around 1965, the stone was taken down. It was not alone; three other stones nearby disappeared at the same time. The reasons are unrecorded, but the mid-twentieth century was not a gentle period for prehistoric monuments in rural Ireland, where field clearance, land improvement schemes, and simple indifference led to the quiet erasure of features that had stood for millennia. Four stones gone from a single ridge in a single episode represents a significant local loss, and the fact that the site held multiple stones makes it all the more intriguing. Whether they formed a loose grouping, a alignment, or simply happened to occupy the same stretch of high ground is now impossible to say with certainty.

The ridge itself still exists, of course, and the views it commands have not changed. But the stones are gone, and Booladurragha now belongs to that particular category of Irish archaeological site, one defined less by what you can see than by the faint sense of an absence.