It stands 1.75 metres tall, rectangular in plan, and only about 20 centimetres thick, giving it a blade-like profile when viewed side-on. What makes its situation particularly interesting is what lies nearby: roughly 30 metres to the south-south-west sits a stone row, a prehistoric alignment of multiple standing stones set in a line. The two monuments, the solitary leaning stone and the row, occupy the same open pasture above the Lee River valley, and their proximity raises the obvious question of whether they were ever intended to work together.

Standing stones are among the more enigmatic survivals of Irish prehistory. They appear across the landscape in considerable numbers, and while some are clearly associated with burials or boundary marking, many resist easy interpretation. This example, with its long axis running north-east to south-west and its pronounced westward lean, sits in a tradition of monument-making that was active in Cork and Kerry during the Bronze Age, a period when stone rows and single orthostats, the technical term for a single upright stone, were erected across the uplands and valleys of Munster. The association between standing stones and stone rows is well documented in the region, though whether the Rossnakilla stone was always a standalone feature or once formed part of a wider ceremonial arrangement is not recorded. The westward view over the Lee valley it commands is simply a consequence of the local topography, but it is a detail that lingers nonetheless.