It is, in fact, a prehistoric standing stone, a gallaun, recorded as a National Monument and absorbed so thoroughly into the landscape that only a poorly preserved slate sign, encased in concrete a few metres to its west, marks it out as anything beyond agricultural infrastructure. The stone now measures roughly 1.2 metres high, 1.88 metres wide, and 0.3 metres thick, its long axis aligned north to south.

When the antiquarian Bertram Windle surveyed and mapped Lough Gur in 1912, the stone was still standing in the garden behind a house, and his measurements recorded it at around 1.8 metres in height with a base width of just over two metres. He noted that its position made astronomical alignment studies impossible, since horizon bearings could not be taken from a back garden. Decades later, the archaeologist M. J. O'Kelly offered a more functional interpretation. Writing in 1942 and 1944, O'Kelly argued that this stone was one of five in the area that marked the line of an ancient road running from Lough Gur Cross in an approximately straight line, heading north-north-west across the barony boundary into Clanwilliam. The road itself was only visible as a physical feature for a short stretch in the townland of Ballingoola, where it appeared as a slight ridge and where ploughing had turned up a surface of broken limestone. Across the wider landscape, O'Kelly counted twelve standing stones in total, nine in the Small County barony and three in Clanwilliam, each one a surviving waymarker along a route that has otherwise long since vanished.

The stone sits directly beside the Lough Gur crossroads and is not difficult to locate, though easy to overlook. It has been incorporated into the west-facing hedgerow and field boundary, so it reads visually as part of the enclosure rather than as a freestanding monument. The National Monument sign is there if you look for it, though its condition is poor. Lough Gur itself is one of the most archaeologically dense areas in Ireland, and visitors already familiar with the lake's stone circles and earthworks may find it worth pausing at the crossroads to consider this quieter piece of the puzzle, a stone that once helped travellers navigate a road that ploughs and centuries have almost entirely erased.