It is the surviving portion of a broken standing stone, and its diminished state makes it easy to overlook, which would be a mistake. What remains is still recognisably a standing stone, one of those upright monoliths erected across Ireland during the Bronze Age, whose precise purposes, whether ceremonial, territorial, or funerary, are still debated by archaeologists.

What gives the Leny stone its particular interest is its company. Within a radius of two hundred metres, the landscape holds at least two other standing stones and a ring barrow, the latter being a circular earthen mound enclosed by a ditch, typically associated with prehistoric burial. A church and graveyard lie just over a hundred metres to the south-south-east. This clustering of monuments across different periods suggests that the shoulder of this hill was considered significant over a very long stretch of time, long before the medieval church was built in the vicinity. The stone itself sits in open grassland, with views stretching towards Lough Owel to the south-east, a lake that would have been a prominent landmark for communities living and burying their dead across this part of the midlands for millennia.