Look more closely, and you find something quietly deliberate: two small cup-shaped hollows, one on each face of the slab, positioned so precisely opposite one another that they nearly punch all the way through the stone. Cupmarks, as these shallow carved depressions are known, appear on prehistoric monuments across Ireland and Britain, though their purpose remains genuinely uncertain. What makes this particular stone unusual is not the presence of cupmarks, which are known elsewhere, but that mirrored placement, as though whoever carved them was working towards something, a channel of light, a passage of meaning, or simply a symmetry that mattered to them for reasons now lost.

The stone was recorded in March 1996 and described at that time as a thin, rectangular upright slab measuring roughly 1.2 metres wide and 1.32 metres tall, oriented on a north-north-west to south-south-east axis. The cupmark on the east-north-east face is slightly larger, between 0.08 and 0.09 metres in diameter and 0.05 metres deep; its counterpart on the west-south-west face measures 0.07 metres across and 0.04 metres deep. Neither is especially large, and you could cover each one with a cupped hand. That they align so exactly, from opposite sides of a slab that tapers to as little as 0.1 metres at its thinnest, suggests the carving was done with clear intent and some care. The stone sits at the break of the slope, which is itself a feature that recurs at prehistoric monument sites across Ireland, a liminal position between the ridge above and the lower ground below.