It would be easy to step over it without a second glance. But set into the upper surface of this flat-topped, roughly rectangular stone, measuring about 0.75 metres by 0.6 metres, is a deliberately worked circular hollow, some 35 centimetres across. That hollow is what makes it significant. It is a bullaun stone, a type of carved rock found across Ireland and often associated with early Christian or pre-Christian ritual use, with the basin-shaped depressions thought to have served purposes ranging from the practical grinding of grain or pigment to the votive, the collection of rainwater believed to carry curative properties.

What makes the Carrownlacka example quietly interesting is its context. The stone sits in a field that also contains a possible enclosure, and roughly 50 metres to the north-east lies a cluster of related features: a second bullaun stone, a possible cashel (a type of dry-stone walled enclosure associated with early medieval settlement), and a souterrain, which is an underground stone-lined passage typically used for storage or refuge. That concentration of features within such a small area suggests this was once a place of some activity, even if the ground today gives little away beyond the occasional rock outcropping breaking through the pasture.