The trouble is, nothing is there to see. No upright slab, no fallen block, no socket hole in the ground. What remains is only the memory of a stone, passed along locally long enough to be recorded, but not long enough, or perhaps not stubbornly enough, to survive in any physical form.

Standing stones are among the most enigmatic monuments in the Irish countryside. Erected from the Neolithic period through to the early medieval era, they served purposes that are not always clear, whether as boundary markers, ritual focal points, or memorials. In West Cork they appear with some frequency, lone sentinels in fields and on hillsides, and their presence in the placename record or in local oral tradition often outlasts the stones themselves. At Cloontiquirk, the stone is known only through that local tradition, as documented in the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork, Volume 1, published in 1992. No visible remains were identified at the time of recording, and none have come to light since.