Whoever constructed the souterrain at Knockshanawee, a type of underground passage or storage chamber built from dry-stone walling and roofed with lintels, saw no apparent contradiction in using a carved memorial stone as structural timber. This particular stone, 2.8 metres long and relatively flat, made a serviceable lintel. The fact that it carried an inscription seems not to have mattered.

The souterrain at Knockshanawee was found to contain not one but six ogham stones, all pressed into service as architectural elements. This one was the second innermost lintel, and at some stage before or during construction it had been broken in two, which is why the centre portion of its inscription is now lost. When the site was discovered in 1910, scholars could begin the work of reading what remained. Power, writing in 1932, and Macalister, in 1945, both attempted reconstructions of the text, arriving at something close to GRIMIGGN[I MAQ]I CERC, the bracketed section being their best guess at the missing middle. The formula MAQQI, meaning "son of" in Primitive Irish, is one of the most common phrases in ogham inscriptions, typically marking a lineage: this man, son of that man. McManus, reassessing the stone in 2004, was more cautious, confirming only GRi[ ]GGN and CERC as legible, and leaving the central section as an honest gap rather than a reconstruction. The stone is now on permanent display in the Stone Corridor at University College Cork, where it has been since its removal from the site, joining a wider collection that makes the corridor one of the more quietly remarkable places to encounter early Irish epigraphy.