A single upright stone on a south-facing slope in Carrigeen, County Waterford, is easy to walk past without quite registering what it is. It stands 2.5 metres tall, pointed at the top, and oriented on a WNW-ESE axis, which is not the cardinal alignment one might expect if magnetism or cardinal directions were the organising principle. It sits on a natural shelf in the hillside, positioned so that it looks out, however indirectly, towards the Nier River running east to west roughly 370 metres to the south below.

The stone itself is conglomerate, a rock type made up of rounded fragments cemented together over geological time, giving it a somewhat coarser, more irregular texture than the smooth-faced sandstone or limestone monoliths seen elsewhere in Munster. Its cross-section is rectangular, measuring between 0.6 and 0.9 metres by 0.45 and 0.65 metres, with the western face notably irregular in profile compared to the cleaner lines of the eastern end. Standing stones like this one are among the most enigmatic monument types in the Irish landscape. They date broadly to the Bronze Age, though precise dating of individual examples is rarely possible without associated finds or excavation, and their purposes remain genuinely unclear, with theories ranging from territorial markers to focal points for ritual activity to route indicators in a pre-road landscape. The Nier valley, cutting through the Comeragh Mountains, would have been a significant corridor through otherwise difficult upland terrain, which makes a marker on the slope above it seem less arbitrary than it might first appear.