At Brookpark in County Cork, a single standing stone was faithfully recorded on the six-inch OS maps of 1842, 1904, and 1938, each edition confirming its presence across nearly a century of surveying. By the time anyone looked for it on the ground, it was gone, leaving no visible surface trace.

What makes the absence stranger is the company it once kept. The stone stood approximately thirty metres to the south of what the archaeological record describes as an "anomalous stone group", a cluster of stones whose precise character or purpose is irregular enough to resist easy classification. Standing stones, which are single upright stones set into the earth, are common throughout prehistoric Ireland and are thought to have served a range of functions, from marking boundaries or routeways to acting as focal points for ritual activity. Whether this particular stone at Brookpark was related in purpose to the nearby group is unknown, but the proximity is suggestive. The stone carried enough legal weight that it was placed under a preservation order in 1941, a protection that, in the end, did not prevent its disappearance.