The notch is a slight, natural indentation near the top of the stone, nothing dramatic, but it has accumulated enough devotional significance over the generations to give the site a quiet gravity that its modest setting does little to advertise. The slab stands just over a metre high, tapering gently towards the top, and is only a few centimetres thick at its narrowest point.

The stone does not appear on the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1838, which suggests it was either not considered noteworthy at that time or had not yet acquired its current identity as a named landmark. By the 1916 edition of the same mapping series, however, it is marked as St. Patrick's Stone, indicating that its local reputation had solidified enough to warrant official recognition. The tradition attached to its present location is particularly telling: the stone was apparently being transported by horse and cart from a local church when it fell through the floor of the cart. Rather than continuing the journey, those present took the accident as a sign and erected the stone on the spot where it had landed. This kind of origin story, in which a stone or relic refuses to be moved and thereby chooses its own resting place, appears in folk traditions across Ireland and often serves to sanctify a location that might otherwise seem unremarkable. Here the story has the added detail of the cart floor giving way, lending the moment a slightly theatrical quality that would have made it easy to remember and retell.