But standing stones like this one belong to a tradition of monument-raising that stretches back into prehistoric Ireland, and their original purposes remain genuinely uncertain. Ritual boundary markers, sites of ceremony, astronomical indicators, memorials to the dead: the theories are many, and none has settled the matter.

This particular stone is relatively modest in scale, measuring 1.1 metres by 0.62 metres at its base and standing just over a metre high. It is rectangular in plan and orientated on an east-west axis, a detail that has sometimes been associated with solar alignment at prehistoric sites, though whether that was intentional here is unknown. It sits on a south-sloping ridge, which would have given it some visibility across the surrounding landscape even at its modest height. The precise date of its erection is unrecorded, as is so often the case with standing stones across Cork and the wider country, where the absence of datable artefacts or associated structures leaves them suspended somewhere in the long span between the Neolithic and the early medieval period.