It is not a tall stone by the standards of prehistoric monuments, standing just under one and a half metres high and less than half a metre thick, its shape irregular rather than carefully dressed. But its position is deliberate, placed precisely where the ground opens up to give a wide view northward and westward across the Shannon estuary.

The stone appears on Ordnance Survey maps from 1841 to 1842 and again on the 1914 to 1915 revision, recorded under the Irish name Cloghlea, which broadly translates as grey stone. That name suggests the local community held onto an identity for this boulder across generations, even as its original purpose receded from memory. Standing stones of this kind are generally associated with the Bronze Age, though firm dating is rarely possible without excavation. They served various functions across prehistoric Ireland, from territorial markers to ritual focal points, and some are thought to have been positioned in relation to landscape features or sight lines, which makes the deliberate hilltop placement here, directly overlooking a major waterway, worth pausing over.

The stone sits on a hill that still commands the same unobstructed view it always has, the Shannon stretching out to the north and west below it. It is an irregularly shaped thing, not the kind of monument that photographs well or announces itself dramatically, which is perhaps why it has attracted relatively little attention beyond local surveys.