In the townland of Raheennamadra in County Limerick, a large prehistoric stone was recorded in the early twentieth century and then, as far as aerial survey can determine, simply vanished. It left behind no trace visible on satellite imagery taken between 2011 and 2013, nor on subsequent Google Earth orthoimages. What was once a substantial presence in an ordinary field of pasture has become, in effect, a monument to its own absence.

The stone was described by the antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp, writing between 1917 and 1919, as measuring over four feet in length, three feet high, and three feet six inches thick, a blocky, considerable mass rather than the slender pillar one might picture. Westropp placed it approximately 120 yards from a nearby ringfort, a type of enclosed circular settlement common across early medieval Ireland, typically defined by an earthen bank and ditch. A barrow, that is a burial mound of prehistoric origin, lies roughly 45 metres to the north-east, and the ringfort itself sits about 60 metres in the same direction. The stone was set in pasture around 60 metres east of the townland boundary with Mitchelstowndown North, suggesting it once occupied a meaningful position in a landscape already dense with prehistoric and early medieval activity. Curiously, it was never recorded on Ordnance Survey Ireland historic maps, which means its existence rests almost entirely on Westropp's account.

For anyone drawn to investigate, the site sits in agricultural land and there is no formal public access or signage to speak of. The ringfort and barrow to the north-east remain the more traceable features in this part of Limerick, and Westropp's published plan, reproduced in the archaeological record compiled by Fiona Rooney and uploaded in July 2021, offers the clearest sense of where the stone once sat relative to its neighbours. Whether it was removed, buried, or simply absorbed into the slow churn of farmed ground is unrecorded. Visiting the general area in good light, when shadows fall low across pasture, occasionally reveals earthwork traces invisible at other times, though in this case the stone itself may be gone entirely.