It is not large by the standards of prehistoric monuments, standing just 1.55 metres tall with a roughly square base measuring 0.6 by 0.65 metres, but its placement and form carry the particular quality common to standing stones across Ireland: the sense that someone, at some point in the deep past, went to considerable effort to put it exactly here, and not somewhere else.

Standing stones, sometimes called galláin in Irish, are among the most enigmatic monuments in the Irish landscape. They were erected across a long prehistoric period, broadly spanning the Neolithic through to the early Bronze Age, and their purposes remain genuinely uncertain. Proposed explanations range from territorial markers to astronomical alignments to burial memorials, and the honest answer is that different stones probably served different functions. The Monfieldstown example is orientated on a NNW to SSE axis, which may or may not carry astronomical significance; without excavation or associated finds it is difficult to say more. What is clear from its description is that the stone tapers noticeably toward the top, giving it a slight columnar presence despite its modest height. That narrowing is a reasonably common feature in Cork standing stones and may reflect deliberate shaping, or simply the natural grain of the raw material.