That is the case at Gour in County Cork, where a substantial upright stone, roughly two and a half metres tall and wide enough to be immediately conspicuous in open ground, was removed sometime during the 1970s. What remains is an absence: a patch of rough, peaty hill pasture on the southern side of a sheltered valley running northeast to southwest, northwest of the townland of Bealnagour, where local memory preserves the fact that something significant once stood.

The stone itself, when it existed, was no modest marker. At approximately 0.76 metres by 0.61 metres at its face and standing around 2.44 metres high, it would have been a deliberate, visible feature of the valley. Standing stones of this kind are among the more enigmatic survivals of prehistoric Ireland; they were erected across a broad span of time, most commonly during the Bronze Age, and their purposes remain debated, ranging from territorial markers to ritual focal points to elements within broader ceremonial landscapes. What makes the Gour site particularly interesting is its immediate context. Within roughly twenty metres to the south lies the remains of a hut site, a simple circular or sub-circular structure typical of early settlement in upland areas. An enclosure of some kind sits approximately twenty metres to the north. The standing stone, had it survived, would have sat almost precisely between these two features, suggesting that this quiet valley corner was once a place of some organised human activity rather than empty hillside.