That, after all, is their defining quality, the posture that has given them their name across millennia. The one at Cloghane in County Cork departed from this arrangement at some point in its history and has remained horizontal ever since, lying in agricultural tillage on an east-facing slope like something that simply gave up. It measures just over three metres in length and roughly three-quarters of a metre across, a solid rectangular block of stone substantial enough that its toppling, whenever it occurred, would not have gone unnoticed.

The original purpose of standing stones in Ireland remains a matter of ongoing debate among archaeologists. Some are associated with Bronze Age burial sites, others appear to mark boundaries or routes, and a number seem to have had a ceremonial or commemorative function that is now impossible to recover with certainty. What can be said is that the effort involved in raising a stone of this size was considerable, which suggests that whoever erected it at Cloghane had clear reasons for doing so, even if those reasons are now lost to us. The stone's rectangular profile is relatively well defined, indicating some degree of deliberate shaping or selection rather than a boulder simply dragged from a nearby field.