It was not that the surveyors were careless; stones of this kind were frequently mapped when encountered. The Garravagh stone simply escaped notice, or was perhaps not yet recognised for what it was, leaving it to be recorded only in more recent times.

The stone itself stands 1.45 metres tall and is subrectangular in plan, roughly 0.78 metres by 0.2 metres, with its long axis running NNE-SSW. Standing stones are among the most enduring and least understood monuments in the Irish landscape, raised during prehistory for purposes that remain genuinely unclear, whether as boundary markers, ritual sites, or astronomical alignments. This one sits in pasture and looks eastward along the valley of the River Lee, a position that feels deliberate. The Lee valley runs broadly east-west through mid Cork, and a stone placed to command that view to the east would have been visible across a considerable stretch of open ground, whatever its original purpose.