These are cupmarks, shallow man-made bowls pecked into rock, and they are among the more enigmatic survivals of prehistoric activity in the Irish landscape. No one knows with certainty what they meant to the people who made them, though they appear across Ireland and Britain in association with a wide range of sites, sacred and otherwise. What makes this particular stone quietly interesting is its location, pressed up against a holy well, and the fact that a second cupmarked stone lies immediately adjacent to it.

The five cupmarks on the stone are modest in size, each measuring up to seven centimetres in diameter. That two such stones should occur together, and that both should border a holy well, suggests this small cluster at Ballynacallagh has drawn attention across a very long span of time. Holy wells in Ireland were venerated long before Christianity arrived and were often absorbed into Christian practice rather than abandoned, so the layering of prehistoric stonework beside one is not unusual, even if it remains unexplained. Whether the cupmarks predate any association with the well, or were somehow connected to ritual activity at this spot, is not something the surviving evidence can answer.