Less than a metre tall, it stands just two metres north of the eastern end of an open-sided stone-walled grave-plot, close enough to the burial enclosure to feel purposefully placed, yet clearly belonging to a different order of time altogether.

The stone itself is conglomerate sandstone, a rock type that contains visible pebble inclusions locked within its matrix, giving it a rough, embedded texture quite unlike plain cut stone. It measures 0.77 metres in height and tapers from a base width of 0.4 metres up to 0.25 metres, and its top appears to have been deliberately dressed into a rounded profile, suggesting some degree of shaping rather than simple selection from a field or riverbank. It sits on the lower south-facing slope of Kilmacoliver Hill, looking out over the valley of the River Suir, a position that may well have carried significance long before the site became associated with Christian worship. The graveyard at Kilkieran occupies the grounds of an early medieval monastery, a fact attested by the presence of four high crosses within the enclosure. These carved stone crosses, a form associated broadly with early Christian Ireland from around the seventh century onwards, mark the site as one of some religious importance. The standing stone, which belongs to a much older tradition of prehistoric monumental marking, was either already present when the monastery was established or was incorporated into the sacred landscape of the place over time.