The stone itself measures roughly 66 centimetres wide, with about 47 centimetres of it visible above the ground, and the hollow carved into its face is 33 centimetres across and 16 centimetres deep. Most people would drive past without a second glance, particularly as dumped material at the base of the wall partially obscures it. But that hollow is the whole point: this is a bullaun stone, and it has almost certainly been there, in various configurations, for well over a thousand years.

Bullaun stones are boulders or slabs bearing one or more cup-shaped depressions, ground rather than chiselled into the rock, and they are found widely across Ireland, most often in association with early medieval ecclesiastical sites. The water that collects in a bullaun hollow was frequently considered to have curative or protective properties, and many examples retained local ritual significance long after the religious communities that first used them had disappeared. This one in Ballymaclawrence has clearly been moved and repurposed at some point, incorporated into a field wall rather than left in its original setting. Its relationship to the early ecclesiastical enclosure recorded approximately 480 metres to the south-west is almost certainly not coincidental. That enclosure, a roughly circular or oval earthwork of the kind that typically defined an early Irish monastic or church site, would have been the spiritual centre from which the stone's original function radiated outward. Whether the stone was relocated deliberately, salvaged during wall-building, or simply shifted over centuries of agricultural use, it ended up here, propped on its side, the hollow still stubbornly facing out.