The stone measures roughly 0.7 by 0.6 metres, stands just 0.27 metres high, and its hollow is 0.3 metres across and 0.2 metres deep. A bullaun stone is a rock, usually a boulder or slab, that bears one or more cup-shaped depressions, either natural or artificially ground out; they are associated across Ireland with early Christian sites, holy wells, and places of local devotion, and the water that collects in them was traditionally believed to have curative or protective properties.

This particular stone sits at the grave of St Abban in An Tseanchluain, County Cork, where its presence was not recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of either 1842 or 1903, suggesting it was either overlooked by earlier surveyors or had not yet been placed in its current position. By the time the 1940 six-inch map was produced, it appeared just to the south-east of the grave, though it has since shifted and now lies directly on top of it. A second bullaun stone sits approximately 16 metres to the north-east, which is a reminder that such stones often occur in clusters around early ecclesiastical sites rather than in isolation.

The two stones together, one on the grave itself and one a short distance away, give the site an air of gradual accumulation, as though objects have been gathering around this spot over a long period, not always tidily catalogued or explained.