The standing stone at Leadawillin in County Cork makes itself known through its complete absence. At some point after the mid-nineteenth century, whatever once stood upright on this south-facing pasture slope was removed, leaving no visible surface trace and no recorded reason why.

The only surviving evidence that anything was ever here is a mark on the 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, the first systematic large-scale mapping of Ireland, which recorded a single standing stone at this location. Standing stones are among the most widely distributed prehistoric monument types in Ireland, raised at various points across the Bronze Age and possibly earlier, and used in contexts ranging from territorial markers to ritual sites. What the Leadawillin stone meant to the people who erected it, how tall it stood, or when exactly it was taken down are details that have not survived. It exists now only as a cartographic ghost, a symbol on a sheet of paper from 1842 with nothing left on the ground to correspond to it.