Whether it fell gradually or was toppled at some point in the past is unknown, but its dimensions, at least two metres long and nearly a metre wide, give a sense of the effort that must have gone into raising it in the first place. Its companion still stands, reaching two metres in height, and the pair appear to have been set in a northeast to southwest alignment, a pattern common among paired standing stones in the Irish prehistoric landscape.

The stones occupy a level patch of ground on the northern side of a gently sloping pasture, near the head of the Mealagh river valley. Standing stones of this kind were typically erected during the Bronze Age, and while their precise function remains debated, alignments and pairs are often thought to have served some ceremonial, astronomical, or territorial purpose. What makes the setting at Coomleagh particularly interesting is its relationship with the wider landscape: a wedge-tomb, one of Ireland's earlier megalithic monument types built roughly between 2500 and 2000 BC, lies just 350 metres to the southwest, across the river. Recorded by archaeologist Seán Ó Nualláin in 1988, the pair at Coomleagh forms part of a dense pattern of prehistoric monuments in west Cork, a region that preserves an unusual concentration of stone rows, pairs, and circles from this period.