The first and second editions of the six-inch OS maps clearly marked this ancient marker, but by the time the third edition was published, cartographers could only note it as ‘site of’, suggesting the stone had already vanished from its original position.

Today, visitors to this patch of rising pasture land might spot a substantial stone, roughly 1.5 metres tall, serving rather prosaically as a gatepost a short distance northwest of where the maps indicated the original monument stood. Whether this is indeed the same prehistoric standing stone, repurposed by some practical farmer in years past, remains a matter of speculation. Such relocations weren’t uncommon in rural Ireland, where ancient stones often found second lives as building materials, boundary markers, or agricultural fixtures.

The site exemplifies a common archaeological puzzle across County Donegal and indeed much of Ireland; countless prehistoric monuments have been moved, destroyed, or incorporated into later structures over the centuries. What survives in the landscape today is often just a fragment of what once existed, leaving us to piece together the past from old maps, local memory, and the occasional stone standing where it perhaps shouldn’t be.