It is subrectangular in shape, roughly ninety centimetres tall, one and a half metres long, and just thirty-three centimetres wide, oriented along an east-north-east to west-south-west axis. That alignment is unlikely to be accidental. Standing stones across Ireland were set with care, and while the precise intentions of the people who raised them remain contested, orientation toward solar or lunar events was a recurring concern, worked into the placement of these monuments across millennia.

The stone was recorded by O'Brien in 1970, and its dimensions and alignment were noted in the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork, published in 1992. Beyond those bare measurements, the historical record is sparse. What can be said is that standing stones of this kind belong broadly to prehistoric tradition, with many in Munster dating to the Bronze Age, a period when the Cork and Kerry landscape was being marked, divided, and ritually organised in ways still only partially understood. The Coulagh stone is modest by any measure, but its careful orientation suggests it was placed with the same deliberate intent found in far more celebrated examples.