It is a conspicuous object, and yet it did not appear on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of either 1838 or 1929, which is itself a small puzzle. Standing stones, erected during the Bronze Age as markers, memorials, or territorial signals, were usually noted by Victorian surveyors even when their purpose was obscure. This one was either overlooked or, perhaps, already lying flat when those maps were made.

The stone measures 3.1 metres in height and has a roughly rectangular cross section, its long axis oriented northwest to southeast. On the lower portion of its southwest face there is a shallow circular depression about ten centimetres across, which looks like a cup-mark, the kind of deliberate hollow carved into prehistoric stones across Ireland and Britain, though in this case it appears to be a natural solution hollow rather than something worked by human hands. What is not in doubt is its territorial significance. The antiquarian John O'Donovan, working on the Ordnance Survey Letters in 1838, noted that the stone stood on the boundary between ancient territories within the Barony of Tirawley, a medieval administrative division in north Mayo. The Barony of Tirawley took its name from the ancient kingdom of Tír Amhalghaidh, territory long associated with the Uí Fiachrach dynasty. The stone, whenever it was first raised, had become a landmark precise enough to define where one jurisdiction ended and another began.

Its recent history adds a further layer of strangeness. During land reclamation work in the 1980s, the stone was lifted from the ground, apparently without great difficulty since it had not been deeply set, and was afterwards re-erected at roughly the same spot. It stands now in a small stony hollow, looking out over the sharply rolling terrain toward the estuary of the River Moy to the east, with the Ox Mountains on the far horizon and the mass of Nephin and the Nephin Beg range visible to the southwest. Whether its current orientation matches its original one is unknown. It was put back where it had been, more or less, but the fine details of its replanting belong to a decade of practical farming rather than archaeological record.