By 1987, whatever had once been recorded as an upright prehistoric marker was no longer visible at ground level. A displaced stone nearby, roughly a metre long and between 0.2 and 0.3 metres across, may or may not be the same object, toppled and forgotten in the intervening decades. The uncertainty itself is part of what makes the site worth considering.

When it was formally recorded in 1940, the stone had a triangular cross-section, standing roughly 1.05 metres high and aligned approximately north-east to south-west, a orientation that recurs on prehistoric standing stones across Ireland and has prompted much speculation about astronomical or ritual significance. The stone sat in a fold of the hillside, with a small stream running west-north-west to east-south-east about 50 metres to the north-east. What gives the location an additional layer of interest is its immediate proximity to Bronze Age cooking sites. A fulacht fia, the term for an ancient outdoor cooking place typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone beside a water source, lies around 30 metres to the east. A second possible fulacht fia sits roughly 100 metres to the north-west. Whether the standing stone was connected in any practical or ceremonial way to this cluster of activity is unknown, but the grouping suggests the hillside was a place people returned to over a long period.

The stone's disappearance from ground level is not unusual in Irish archaeology. Prehistoric standing stones have been removed for field clearance, incorporated into boundary walls, or simply tipped over and left. What remains at Slievebaun Hill is a location where the map, the landscape, and a loose stone on a slope are the only evidence that something was once deliberately placed upright here.