The standing stone at Coollicka in County Cork offers none of these things. It is gone, removed entirely, leaving no visible trace on the south-west-facing pasture slope where it once stood. What remains is essentially a description and an argument: that something was here, that it mattered, and that the ground itself once held it upright.

The argument was made by P. J. Hartnett, who in 1939 recorded a large stone lying flat in the field. It was, by his account, a substantial piece of work: eleven and a half feet long and four by two feet in cross-section, regular in shape and considerable in bulk. Hartnett believed it had originally stood as a standing stone rather than simply been deposited there, and his reasoning was straightforward. The underside of the stone showed weathering inconsistent with a surface that had always faced downward; it had, at some point, been exposed to the elements on all sides. Standing stones of this kind are a familiar feature of the Irish landscape, prehistoric markers whose precise purposes remain debated but which were clearly set with intention, their erection requiring real communal effort. By the time Hartnett saw it, this one had already fallen or been toppled. Since then it has been removed altogether, leaving the slope at Coollicka with no surface trace of what was once, presumably, a prominent local landmark.