It may once have stood upright, a standing stone of the kind raised across Ireland during the Bronze Age, sometimes as markers, sometimes as memorials, their original purpose rarely recoverable. Now it rests horizontally, measuring just over a metre in length, and beneath it, or rather beneath the low rise on which it lies, there may be something else entirely.

The stone appears to have fallen, or been felled, onto what could be a mound-barrow, a low earthen burial mound of the type found across the Irish midlands, typically dating to prehistoric periods. The qualifier "possible" applies twice here, to the stone's former upright status and to the mound beneath it, which makes Rathcaled an interesting case of layered ambiguity. Two things that might each be something significant have ended up occupying the same soggy corner of low-lying wet grassland, each casting a degree of doubt on the other. Whether the stone once marked the mound, toppled from a nearby location, or was placed there at some later point is not known.