At Kingsland in County Cork, a standing stone that once rose seven feet from a south-facing slope in tillage ground has vanished entirely, leaving no visible trace on the surface. The field has swallowed it, or someone removed it, and what remains is essentially a coordinate, a place where a significant prehistoric marker used to be.

Standing stones are among the most enigmatic survivors of prehistoric Ireland, single upright slabs whose original purposes remain debated, ranging from burial markers and boundary points to ritual or astronomical functions. The Kingsland stone was recorded in 1918 by O'Leary, who noted its dimensions as seven feet high, two feet wide, and two feet thick, a substantial monolith by any measure. That record is now the only evidence it ever existed. Whether it was broken up for field clearance, incorporated into a wall, or simply toppled and buried during centuries of agricultural work is unknown. By the time the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork was compiled in 1994, it was already gone.