It is a standing stone in the most literal sense: one slab, planted upright, measuring roughly ninety centimetres across and fifty centimetres deep, making no obvious concession to ornament or inscription. These are the kinds of monuments that tend to go unremarked in the landscape, absorbed into the daily business of farmland until they are barely noticed by anyone except the cattle grazing around them.

Standing stones of this kind are found throughout Ireland, and their purposes remain genuinely uncertain. Some appear to mark boundaries, burial sites, or routeways; others may have served astronomical or ceremonial functions, their alignments possibly relating to the movements of the sun or moon across the horizon. The northeast-southwest orientation of the Farnanes stone is not unusual among Irish examples, and while no specific historical record attaches to this particular monument, such stones are generally considered prehistoric in origin, most likely dating to the Bronze Age. The rectangular, unworked character of the stone places it within a broad regional tradition of simple upright markers that once punctuated the West Cork countryside in much greater numbers than survive today.