The example on the slopes of Cronebane in County Wicklow falls firmly into the latter category. Just a metre tall and made of quartz, it is the kind of monument that rewards those who go looking rather than those who stumble past.

The stone sits on a relatively steep west-facing slope, its long axis oriented roughly north to south. Quartz was not a casual choice in prehistoric Ireland; the material carried apparent symbolic weight and appears repeatedly at ritual sites across the country, from the entrance kerb at Newgrange to smaller local monuments like this one. The pillar is notably irregular in shape, varying between 34 and 60 centimetres in width and between 25 and 36 centimetres in thickness, which gives it a slightly raw, unworked quality compared with more formally dressed standing stones elsewhere. What it lacks in height it compensates for in situation. The views west from this spot take in Croghanmoira and the long trough of Glenmalure, one of the most dramatically glaciated valleys in Wicklow, and it is hard not to wonder whether that westward aspect, so consistently meaningful at prehistoric monuments, was deliberately chosen by whoever placed the stone here.