That sounds modest enough, but the detail that quietly elevates it is where it sits: 5.5 metres to the north-east of an ogham stone, those early medieval pillars inscribed with a notched alphabet used to record names and lineages in Ireland from roughly the fourth century onwards. The proximity is unlikely to be coincidental.

The slab itself is only 0.4 metres high, and it is the upper eastern angle that is perforated rather than the centre of the stone. Holed stones of this kind appear across Ireland and Britain in association with prehistoric and early medieval monuments, and their purpose has never been definitively settled. Theories range from ritual hand-clasping and oath-taking to more functional explanations involving tethering or boundary-marking. What is clear at Cool is that somebody, at some point, chose to place or retain this perforated slab in deliberate relation to the ogham stone beside it, and the two together form a small but quietly legible cluster of early activity in the landscape of the Iveragh Peninsula.