Sub-rectangular in shape and aligned along a northeast-southwest axis, it measures roughly 0.6 metres by 0.4 metres at its base. That orientation is not accidental, or at least not obviously so; many prehistoric standing stones in Ireland follow alignments that archaeologists have long debated in relation to solar or lunar events, though whether this particular stone was set with any such purpose in mind remains unknown.

What sharpens the interest here is the proximity of a ringfort, the remains of which lie just five metres to the northwest. A ringfort, to borrow the simplest definition, is a roughly circular enclosed settlement, typically of early medieval date, defined by one or more earthen or stone banks. The combination of a standing stone and a ringfort in such close quarters raises a familiar question in Irish field archaeology: were they contemporary, or did the ringfort's builders simply raise their enclosure beside a stone that was already ancient when they arrived? Standing stones in Ireland generally belong to the Bronze Age, which would make this feature considerably older than any ringfort on the same ground. The pairing was noted by O'Brien in 1970 and included in the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork, the systematic county-wide survey published in 1992.