At Poularick in County Cork, there is nothing to see: a field of pasture, no upright stone, no visible surface trace of anything that once stood here. What makes the spot quietly curious is the narrow window of its documented existence. Standing stones, single upright slabs erected in prehistoric or early medieval Ireland for purposes that remain genuinely debated, are at least usually present when recorded. This one is notable for having been caught by cartographers only once before disappearing entirely.

The Ordnance Survey mapped this part of Cork twice in the nineteenth century, producing six-inch sheets in 1842 and again in 1904. Neither shows any standing stone at Poularick. Then, on the 1943 revision of the same six-inch series, a single standing stone is marked. Somewhere between 1904 and 1943 it entered the record, or was simply noticed for the first time by a surveyor passing through. After that, it was removed. Whether it was taken for use as a gatepost or field boundary, broken up, or shifted for agricultural convenience is not known. By the time anyone thought to look again, the pasture had closed over whatever socket or socket-stone might once have anchored it, leaving no trace at ground level.