The stone rises to 1.6 metres, rectangular in plan with its long axis running north to south, and it carries two distinct types of surface scoring: a series of marks on its upper surface, and what observers have described as several cup-marks on its eastern face. Cup-marks are shallow, roughly circular depressions pecked into stone, found on prehistoric monuments across Ireland and Britain, and their precise purpose remains debated. The scorings on the upper surface are the more contentious feature.

Richard Rolt Brash, writing in 1879, believed those upper markings to be ogham inscriptions. Ogham is an early medieval Irish script in which letters are represented by groups of strokes cut along a central line, most commonly found on standing stones. P. J. Hartnett, examining the stone in 1939, also noted the cup-marks on the eastern face, lending weight to the idea that the stone had been deliberately worked in more than one way. The more sceptical voice belongs to R. A. S. Macalister, who in 1945 rejected the ogham reading entirely, though his rejection carries an awkward caveat: he never examined the stone himself. That a scholar would dismiss a potential inscription without seeing it in person gives the whole episode a slightly unsatisfying quality, and leaves the question of those upper-surface scorings technically unresolved. The stone sits roughly 50 metres north-west of a ringfort, and a separate cup-marked stone lies about 5.5 metres to its west, suggesting this corner of a Mid Cork field was once a place of some accumulated significance.