It is not especially tall, rising less than a metre out of the ground, and at roughly 88 by 70 centimetres across it is broad rather than blade-like. What makes it quietly arresting is not its size but its reported use: according to local tradition, mass was said here.

That detail places the stone in a practice that persisted in Ireland through the Penal era, when the public celebration of Catholic mass was suppressed under law. Open-air sites, often built around pre-existing landscape features such as boulders or standing stones, served as improvised altars and gathering points. Known as mass rocks, these sites were chosen for their remoteness or natural cover, and many of them have accumulated layers of memory that outlasted the laws that made them necessary. Whether this particular stone served as a mass rock in that strict Penal-era sense, or whether the association is older or looser, the local memory itself is the significant thing. The stone's long axis runs roughly north-north-west to south-south-east, a detail that may mean nothing or may reflect an older intentionality that is no longer recoverable.