The oval basin hollowed into its upper surface is what makes it a bullaun, a category of ancient carved stone found widely across Ireland, typically associated with early ecclesiastical sites or boundary markers, and traditionally credited with healing properties or ritual significance. This particular example carries an earthier reputation: locally it is known as the Hatter's Stone, on the basis that the basin was once used to mould felt hats.

The stone originally stood at a fork in a laneway on a steep north-west-facing slope in Reatagh townland, just across the county boundary in Waterford, where it overlooked a small wooded valley with a stream below. That kind of liminal setting, a junction in a path, a slope at the edge of cultivated land, is not unusual for bullaun stones, which have a habit of turning up at the margins of things. At some point before 1989 it was moved to its present location in Carrickbeg for safe keeping, crossing not just a laneway but a county line in the process. The basin itself measures roughly 26 centimetres by 24 centimetres, deep enough to have been genuinely useful for a practical trade purpose, though whether the hatter story is occupational memory or a later folk explanation for an older and stranger use is impossible to say with any certainty.