This one, on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, occupies a west-facing ridge of rough boggy ground above the Small River, known locally but essentially invisible to official cartography for generations. That gap between being noticed and being formally mapped is itself a small puzzle worth sitting with.

The stone is a rectangular block, 1.2 metres high, oriented roughly northwest to southeast, and leaning slightly to the west as though it has spent centuries accommodating the prevailing wind off the Atlantic. At its base it measures 0.8 metres wide and 0.65 metres thick, which gives it a solid, planted quality despite its modest height. Part of the upper surface has spalled off, a term for the way stone fractures and flakes over time under the pressure of freeze-thaw cycles and weathering, leaving a rougher, irregular crown. Whether it was erected as a territorial marker, a ritual boundary stone, or something else entirely is not recorded. Standing stones of this kind are scattered across the Irish landscape and date broadly to the Bronze Age, though individual examples are notoriously difficult to date with precision. What the archaeological record of South Kerry does confirm is simply that it is there, on that ridge, overlooking the water, as it has been for a very long time.