That it survives at all is something of an accident. Around 1981 the stone was removed, and what can be seen now is thought to be the stump left behind, the rest of the original megalith gone from the landscape it had occupied for centuries, possibly millennia.

The contrast between that remnant and what was once recorded here is considerable. A researcher named Bowman, writing in 1934, noted a standing stone on the land of a Mrs. O'Donoghue measuring five feet two inches tall with a girth of seven feet one inch. That is a substantial upright stone, broad-bodied and commanding enough to have been a genuine landmark on the hillside. Standing stones of this kind are found throughout Cork and the wider Irish landscape, often of prehistoric origin, their exact purpose debated but frequently associated with territorial marking, ceremonial use, or the alignment of significant points in the local geography. The Knockardsharriv stone, in its original dimensions, would have belonged to that tradition of deliberate, considered placement in the land. Whether the removal around 1981 was the result of agricultural clearance or some other cause is not recorded, but the effect was to reduce a once-visible monument to a near-invisible stump in an ordinary field.