The stone at Ballyroe Upper is slightly concave in shape with a tapering top, qualities that distinguish it from the more uniform profiles often associated with prehistoric monoliths, and it sits just north of an old laneway that still traces the land here. Standing stones, erected most commonly during the Bronze Age, were set upright in the ground for purposes that remain debated, with proposed functions ranging from boundary markers and ritual sites to astronomical alignments.

The stone was identified by Billy O'Brien of Kilfinnane, and details of the site were compiled by Caimin O'Brien, with the record uploaded in August 2020. Its two companions in this loose cluster lie 93 metres to the south-southwest and 287 metres to the west respectively, all three accessed from the same old laneway. The Glenduff Stream runs roughly 50 metres to the north, marking the townland boundary with Kilfinnane, and within 285 metres to the northeast sits the Kilfinnane motte, a raised earthen mound of the kind constructed by Anglo-Norman lords in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as a foundation for a timber or stone tower. The proximity of prehistoric standing stones to a medieval motte is not unusual in the Irish landscape; successive peoples tended to settle and mark the same patches of productive ground across millennia.

The stone stands in tillage, so access requires care and an awareness of the farming calendar. The old laneway referred to in the record is the practical route for approaching all three stones in the cluster, and the relatively open, low-lying ground means the stones are visible without much difficulty once you are in the right area. The Kilfinnane motte to the northeast provides a useful orientation point. Visitors should seek landowner permission before crossing agricultural fields, and the site is best approached in late summer or autumn when crops have been cleared and the ground is firmer underfoot.