The original mass rock, the flat stone surface that once served as an improvised altar during the Penal era, when Catholic worship was driven outdoors and into remote terrain, is entirely gone from the record. When archaeologists from the Archaeological Survey of Ireland visited the site in 1997, they found no surface remains of the rock itself, only the later concrete commemorative structure that had been built in its place. It is a site where the memorial has outlasted the thing being memorialised.

Mass rocks were used during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the Penal Laws prohibited Catholic priests from publicly celebrating Mass. Congregations would gather on hillsides, in mountain hollows, and along remote field boundaries, using a large flat stone as a makeshift altar, often with a lookout posted to watch for soldiers or informers. The Gortnaclohy site sits on steeply sloping ground, the kind of elevated, awkward terrain that would have offered both concealment and a view of approaching danger. Notably, it does not appear on any historic Ordnance Survey Ireland maps, which suggests it was either never formally recorded in that period or that its precise location remained known only through local memory rather than official documentation. The site was compiled for the archaeological record by Martin Fitzpatrick, with the entry uploaded in August 2021.

The site is now enclosed within a large modern coniferous plantation, which makes access and visibility considerably more difficult than the open hillside it would once have been. The area can be located using Google Earth orthoimages, positioned immediately to the east of a local road on the mountain's eastern flank. Those attempting to visit should be prepared for dense forestry and sloping ground rather than a cleared or maintained heritage space. The concrete shrine structure should still be findable, though the plantation may have altered the immediate surroundings since the 1997 survey. There is no interpretive signage recorded at the site, and the absence of the original rock means the physical experience of the place rests almost entirely on what the visitor already brings to it.