Standing stone, Bolany, Co. Wexford

The stone appears on the 1940 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, positioned on a steep north-facing slope above the valley of the Blackwater Stream as it runs from west to east below. By 1987, it was no longer visible at ground level, swallowed by pasture and whatever gradual processes conspire to bury, topple, or simply obscure such monuments over the decades.

When someone did look at it closely, in 1939, what they found was a squat, rather unassuming object. Standing stones, which are single upright stones erected in prehistory for purposes that remain debated, ranging from territorial markers to ritual sites, tend to command a certain presence. This one was modest even before it disappeared: roughly 0.8 metres by 0.7 metres at the base, and somewhere between 0.65 and 0.8 metres tall. The top measured around 0.4 metres by 0.45 metres and had a rectangular profile that suggested it might have been broken at some earlier point, leaving only the lower portion. Whether the original stone was once considerably taller is unknown. What was recorded in 1939, in other words, may already have been only a fragment of something larger.