It is not especially tall, just under 1.75 metres, roughly the height of a person, but it has the kind of solidity that makes you wonder how long it has been sitting in that southwest-facing slope without anyone feeling the need to write it down.

The stone is subrectangular in plan, meaning its cross-section is roughly rectangular rather than pointed or irregular, and it measures about 1.19 metres by 0.42 metres at the base. It leans slightly to the southeast, and its long axis runs northeast to southwest, an orientation that may or may not be deliberate but is common enough among Irish standing stones to raise the question. Standing stones as a category are notoriously difficult to date or explain with confidence. They appear across Ireland from the Bronze Age onwards, erected as boundary markers, ceremonial monuments, burial indicators, or simply as features whose original purpose has been completely lost. The stone at Gortnalicky offers no additional clues, no associated finds, no carvings, just the fact of its presence on a slope in County Cork, unrecorded until well after the first systematic mapping of the island.