The reality, on closer inspection, is considerably more mundane and, for that reason, rather more interesting. This particular stone, standing 2.13 metres tall and aligned roughly north to south with a slight lean to the north, was almost certainly erected not by Bronze Age people marking sacred ground, but by a farmer, probably sometime in the last hundred years, giving his cattle something to rub against.

The evidence is visible on the stone's eastern face, where two small notches betray the method used to split it from its source rock. This is the plug and feather technique, a quarrying method in which a line of holes is drilled or chiselled into rock, metal wedges (the plugs) are driven between tapered shims (the feathers), and the stone is split cleanly along the intended line. It is a method associated with post-medieval and industrial-era quarrying rather than prehistoric monument-building. Researcher Curtin, writing in 2008 and cited in a record compiled by Paul Walsh, concluded from these marks that the stone was set up as a scratching post for livestock within the last century. The hillock it stands on sits within a pasture field in an area of otherwise low-lying land, which would have made it a practical and visible landmark for both farmer and cattle alike.

The stone measures 0.38 metres wide and 0.20 metres thick, which is to say it is relatively slender, and the slight northward lean gives it just enough irregularity to catch the eye across a flat field. The quarry notches on the eastern face are the detail worth seeking out if you do find yourself nearby. They are not large, but once you know what you are looking at, the utilitarian logic of the whole thing becomes clear: a slab of locally quarried rock, split deliberately, hauled upright, and planted on a rise where generations of cattle could make good use of it.