Across its upper surface are seven cup-shaped depressions, some little more than shallow saucers, others wide enough and deep enough to hold a meaningful quantity of water. Two of them are connected to channels that run to the edge of the stone. This is a bullaun stone, a class of monument found across Ireland in which one or more bowl-like hollows have been ground or worn into a rock, often associated with early Christian sites and with folk practices that persisted long after the formal church moved on.

The stone goes by the name the Holy Stone, and the traditions attached to it reflect the layered way sacred meaning accumulates around such objects. One account, cited by McKenna in 1979, connects it to a Catholic church that stood in nearby Chapel Lane between 1702 and 1812; the depressions, on this account, served as receptacles for holy water. Rounds were also reportedly made at the stone, a practice in which a person walks a prescribed circuit around a sacred site, often as a form of prayer or penance. A quite different tradition, recorded by the antiquarian Macalister in 1898, holds that the stone was not originally from this spot at all, but once formed part of a complex of standing stones and rock art at Milltown. If that is true, it has travelled some distance, whether physically moved or simply re-adopted into a new ritual geography. The two traditions are not necessarily in conflict; stones of this kind were frequently absorbed into Christian practice precisely because they already carried the weight of older association.

The stone is visible on the roadside at the top of Dingle's Main Street, which means it can be found without any particular effort, though it is easy to pass without registering what you are looking at. The seven depressions are most legible when the light is low and raking across the surface, which tends to bring out the depth and shape of each hollow far more clearly than flat midday light.