It stands 1.58 metres tall and measures 1.15 metres by 0.76 metres at its base, broad and deliberate rather than the tapering pillar shape many people associate with prehistoric standing stones. The land around it opens outward in every direction, which is a pattern shared by many such monuments across Ireland and may well have been intentional, whether for reasons of visibility, ceremony, or something else entirely that has long since passed out of memory.

Standing stones of this kind are among the more quietly puzzling features of the Irish landscape. They were erected across a broad sweep of prehistory, most commonly during the Bronze Age, and their precise purposes remain genuinely uncertain. Some are thought to mark boundaries, burial sites, or routes; others may have had astronomical or ceremonial functions. The Coulagh stone was recorded by O'Brien in 1970 and later included in the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork, a systematic survey of the region's prehistoric and early historic monuments. West Cork has an unusually dense concentration of prehistoric remains, and a solitary stone set with apparent deliberateness in open ground, with clear sightlines stretching away on all sides, fits comfortably into that landscape of ancient intention.