This ancient monolith once had a companion; historical Ordnance Survey maps from the 19th century recorded two stones at this location, but according to local historian M.R. Colhoun, the second stone met an ignominious end when it was broken up for gravel. The surviving stone now stands within school grounds, a silent witness to millennia of Irish history.

Archaeological investigations in 2006 shed new light on this ancient site when testing was carried out ahead of a housing development. During the excavation of five trenches, archaeologists discovered a circular pit feature approximately one metre in diameter, located just 13 metres from the roadside. The pit, which descended 0.42 metres into the ground, contained layers of silty clay mixed with charcoal, and a large stone near its base. The presence of oxidised clay in the primary fill suggested two intriguing possibilities: this could have been a funerary pit, though no burnt bone was found, or perhaps more tantalizingly, it might represent the socket where the destroyed standing stone once stood.

These standing stones, like many throughout Ireland, likely date to the Bronze Age, erected by communities whose beliefs and rituals remain largely mysterious to us. Whether marking territorial boundaries, serving astronomical purposes, or commemorating the dead, such monuments represent some of Ireland’s oldest surviving architecture. The archaeological survey that documented this site forms part of County Donegal’s comprehensive field antiquities record, cataloguing human activity from the Mesolithic period through to the 17th century, ensuring that even when stones are lost to gravel quarrying, their memory persists in the archaeological record.