The example at Gortnacowly in West Cork is now missing one of its original members, which gives the surviving arrangement a slightly skewed, trapezium shape rather than a neat quadrilateral. What remains is still striking in its asymmetry, with the south-western stone, a massive block reaching just over three metres in height, dwarfing its companions considerably.

The four stones here were first recorded in 1899, and their positions were later studied and published by Seán Ó Nualláin in 1984. At that point three stones survived, and that appears to remain the case. The tallest, the south-western block, measures 1.5 metres long and just under a metre thick at its base. Roughly two metres to the north-east stands a noticeably slimmer stone at 2.3 metres high, and a third, shorter stone sits about 1.5 metres to the south-east of the first. The fourth stone, which would have completed the rectangle, is gone. Four posters are found across Ireland and Britain and are generally associated with the Bronze Age, though their precise ritual or astronomical function is still debated. The Gortnacowly example sits on the northern side of the Mealagh river valley, near the foot of the Maughanaclea hills, a setting that places it in the kind of upland fringe landscape where prehistoric communities frequently raised such monuments.