On its north face is a Latin cross, cleanly incised into the stone. Beneath it, carved in relatively recent times, are the initials F D. But what makes the stone genuinely curious is what may lie beneath the surface: the pillar is said to contain an ogham inscription, one of Ireland's early medieval scripts in which letters are represented by a series of notches and strokes cut along a central line, now concealed beneath the surrounding masonry.

The stone stands on the north-west side of St John's Well, a small covered holy well tucked into the yard of a house. The folklorist Caoimhín Ó Danachair described the site in 1960, noting that the well was formerly visited as a place of religious observance, particularly on the 24th of June, the feast of St John the Baptist. That practice appears to have faded away around 1900. Holy wells in Ireland were typically visited on the feast day of their patron saint, with patterns, or ritual circuits of prayer, forming the core of the observance. St John's Well in Dingle seems to have followed that tradition before gradually falling out of use.

The layering here is what rewards attention: an early medieval inscription possibly sealed inside the wall, a carved cross of uncertain but considerable age on the outer face, modern initials added by someone unknown, and a devotional practice that persisted into the late nineteenth century before quietly ending. The stone is now integrated into the structure of the yard wall, which means the ogham, if it exists, may remain hidden indefinitely.