Yet at 2.8 metres tall and roughly 1.3 metres wide, it is a substantial presence in the landscape, the kind of thing that registers in the corner of your eye before you have quite worked out what you are looking at.

The stone is subrectangular in plan, meaning its cross-section is broadly rectangular with softened or irregular edges rather than the sharp geometry of cut masonry. Its long axis runs northeast to southwest, an orientation that may or may not be significant; a number of Irish standing stones appear to have been positioned with solar or lunar alignments in mind, though without excavation or associated finds it is rarely possible to say so with confidence for any individual example. Standing stones of this type belong to a broad tradition of prehistoric monumental activity in Ireland, most commonly associated with the Bronze Age, though some examples are earlier and others were erected to mark boundaries or graves at various periods. They are among the most widely distributed archaeological monuments in the Irish countryside, and also among the least understood, having left no written record of their own purpose or the communities that raised them. This one in Glantane, solid and unadorned on its sloping field, is no exception.