For years it was propped against the north wall of Aghowle church, and at some point acquired a reputation as a possible phallic symbol, the kind of label that tends to attach itself to any upright stone of ambiguous purpose. Scholarship was sceptical, and rightly so. What this object almost certainly is, is a jostle stone, also known as a stop-bollard, a piece of street and estate furniture so mundane in its original function that it is now genuinely easy to overlook.

Jostle stones were practical things, placed in pairs on either side of a gateway to protect the wooden jambs and the wheels of passing carriages from collision damage. The cylindrical shaft of the Aghowle stone has been carefully dressed, shaped to do its job cleanly, while the rougher, knob-like end was left undressed deliberately; that portion was driven into the ground to anchor the whole thing in place. The stone probably dates to the eighteenth or nineteenth century, when carriage traffic made such precautions routine on any property with a decent entrance. Its companion stone has not been located, and this surviving example had a quiet disappearance of its own, going missing from the site for a number of years before being returned in 2014. It is now in the care of the Office of Public Works.