The second edition of the OS 6-inch map, produced in the late 19th century, confidently marked a ‘Standing Stone’ at this location, suggesting that surveyors could still see this ancient monument rising from the landscape. By the time the third edition was published, however, the notation had changed to the rather melancholic ‘Standing Stone (site of)’, indicating that the stone had disappeared sometime in the intervening years.

Today, nothing remains of this prehistoric marker on the arable land close to the shores of Lough Swilly. The stone would have been erected during the Bronze Age, likely between 2500 and 500 BCE, when such monuments were commonly placed across the Irish landscape. These solitary stones served various purposes; some marked burial sites, others delineated territorial boundaries, and many may have held ritual or astronomical significance for the communities that raised them.

The fate of the Ballymoney standing stone remains unknown, though its story is sadly common throughout Ireland. Many such monuments were destroyed during agricultural improvements in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when stones were broken up for building materials or simply removed as impediments to farming. The archaeological record for this site comes from the comprehensive Archaeological Survey of County Donegal, compiled in 1983, which documented both the surviving monuments and the ghostly absences marked only by old maps and local memory.