Sometime around 1940, the sub-rectangular slab was pulled from its original position on a north-facing slope and pressed into more practical service as part of a field fence, two fields to the east. It is a quietly common fate for prehistoric standing stones across Ireland, where ancient markers were repurposed by farmers with fences to build and little reason to think twice about it.

The stone itself is modest in scale, measuring roughly 1.15 metres in height and 0.25 metres across, narrowing as it rises toward the top. Standing stones of this kind, upright single slabs set into the ground in prehistory, are among the most enigmatic monuments in the Irish landscape. Their original purposes remain largely unresolved, with theories ranging from territorial markers to ceremonial or astronomical functions. What makes Cahergarriff slightly unusual is that the placename preserved the memory of the stone's presence long after the stone had gone elsewhere, while the stone itself survives, just displaced, embedded in a drystone boundary rather than lost entirely.