This one is remarkable for what does not. At Maulrane in County Cork, a standing stone that was once part of a pair has vanished entirely, leaving no visible trace on the surface of the pasture where it once stood. It is the kind of absence that only becomes legible when you know to look for it.

The stone's history, such as it can be pieced together, is largely a story told through maps. It does not appear on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of 1842 or 1904, which raises questions about whether it was overlooked by surveyors, already fallen, or simply considered unremarkable at those times. By 1938, however, a later OS six-inch map records it as the more westerly of two standing stones set roughly sixty metres apart on a south-facing slope. That pairing matters. Two standing stones positioned at that kind of interval are a recognised prehistoric monument type in Ireland, sometimes aligned with solar or lunar events, and their relationship to one another is generally considered as significant as either stone individually. The companion stone, recorded separately, may still survive, but this western example has since been removed, with no surface evidence remaining to mark where it stood.