What makes it worth pausing over is not its height but its surface: carved into the flat upper face are nineteen cupmarks and seven cup-and-ring motifs, the work of hands active here somewhere in the Bronze Age, possibly earlier. Cupmarks are exactly what they sound like, small rounded depressions pecked into rock, while cup-and-rings add one or more concentric carved circles around a central cup. Nobody has arrived at a settled explanation for what these motifs meant to the people who made them, which is part of what makes them quietly unsettling to stand beside.

This particular stone, measuring 2.75 metres by 1.85 metres and sitting only 0.35 metres proud of the ground, is one of a cluster of six decorated stones occupying a compact area of hillside roughly 16 metres by 8 metres, at an elevation of 247 metres above sea level overlooking the Kealduff River valley. The cup-and-ring motifs tend to gather at the north-eastern end of the stone. Among them, one ring is penannular, meaning it forms an incomplete circle with a deliberate gap, and one motif bears the traces of a faint outer ring beyond the main carved circle, giving it a total diameter of 21 centimetres. A further decorated outcrop lies just 4.5 metres to the north, and Lough Brin sits to the east. The carvings are weathered but remain legible to the eye, which given their exposure on open hillside over several millennia is itself worth noting.

The site sits within a stony area of heath pasture, and the stones are low-profile enough that they could easily be overlooked without knowing where to look. The cluster occupies a small, defined patch of slope, so once one stone is located the others are close at hand. The carved surface is at ground level, and crouching down, especially in raking light, brings the individual motifs into much sharper relief than they appear when viewed from standing height.