Rising 1.55 metres from the summit of a low hill in rough pastureland, it leans gently to the east, rectangular in plan and broad enough, at 1.1 metres wide and 0.8 metres thick, to feel genuinely substantial rather than merely upright. At its base on the northern and eastern sides, small granite boulders are still visible beneath the grass, possibly the remnants of original packing stones used to keep the monument stable when it was first erected. The hill position is deliberate in the way that prehistoric siting often is, with Garraunbaun Lough lying to the south-west and Ballynakill Harbour opening out to the north.

Standing stones are among the most common and least understood monuments in the Irish landscape. Erected anywhere from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age, they may have served as territorial markers, ceremonial focal points, or aids to navigation across open country, though in most cases the specific purpose remains opaque. This particular stone caught the attention of the geologist and antiquarian G. H. Kinahan, whose 1869 published work may include a passing reference to it among a group of similar monuments in the area. That tentative attribution is about as far back as the documented record goes, which is itself telling: a stone conspicuous enough to register in a nineteenth-century survey, set in a position commanding views in two directions, and made of gleaming white quartz that would have been visually striking long before anyone thought to write it down.