At Knockrour in County Cork, a standing stone that once rose from the landscape has been removed so completely that nothing remains above ground to suggest it was ever there. No stump, no socket, no displaced earth worth noting. It exists now only as a mark on a map.

The sole evidence for this stone is its appearance on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842, one of the extraordinarily detailed surveys carried out across Ireland in the first half of the nineteenth century, which recorded not only roads and field boundaries but prehistoric monuments, holy wells, and individual upright stones. Standing stones are among the most enigmatic survivals of prehistoric Ireland, raised for purposes that remain debated, whether as territorial markers, monuments to the dead, or elements of ritual landscapes. The Knockrour example was recorded as a single stone, which tells us little about its scale or character, and at some point between that survey and the present it was taken down, most likely cleared during agricultural improvement. No date for its removal is known.