Standing stone, Fenagh Beg, Co. Leitrim

The stone was shifted approximately thirty metres to the south-east at some point before its first recorded appearance on a map, which came only with the revised 1944 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch series. Whatever its original purpose or precise location, the stone had already been relocated by the time anyone thought to write it down.

What survives today is more stump than monument. The limestone slab measures roughly 1.2 metres by 0.3 metres and rises only 0.6 metres above the ground, suggesting that a larger upright once occupied the spot. Standing stones, as a class of monument, are among the more enigmatic survivals of prehistoric Ireland; they were erected over a very long span of time and served functions that remain poorly understood, ranging from territorial markers to ritual sites to commemorative posts. This particular example has yielded no obvious clues. Archaeological testing carried out around 2002 in an area approximately fifty metres to the south turned up no associated features, and a second investigation roughly fifty metres to the north-west, reported in 2006, produced the same result. The ground around the stone has, so far at least, kept its secrets.