Around 1870, during construction work on an artificial lake at Barraderry, workers turned up a stone bearing at least seven cup and ring marks, those circular prehistoric carvings consisting of a central hollow surrounded by one or more concentric rings, whose precise purpose remains a matter of debate among archaeologists. Rather than being sent to a museum, the stone was placed in front of Humewood Castle, the Gothic Revival pile nearby, where it presumably served as a curious ornament for the estate.

The markings were formally recorded by Price in 1934, giving the stone its place in the scholarly literature, though the discovery itself had happened more than sixty years earlier. Cup and ring mark traditions in Ireland and Britain are broadly associated with the Later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, roughly 3000 to 1500 BC, though dating individual examples with precision is difficult. What is unusual about the Barraderry stone is the circumstance of its finding: most rock art of this kind is recorded in situ, still embedded in the landscape where it was first carved. This one was effectively rescued mid-project and repurposed as a garden feature, which says something about Victorian attitudes to prehistory and something about the relative luck of survival. The stone has since been moved again, and its current location differs from the one described at the time of its original documentation.