What makes this one at Scartlea quietly compelling is the care its unknown builders took with placement. Set on a rise in undulating pasture, it commands a clear view to the south-west and Mangerton Mountain, one of the higher peaks of the Killarney uplands. Whether that alignment was intentional or incidental is precisely the kind of question that standing stones, as a class of monument, tend to leave unanswered.

The stone itself is roughly rectangular in plan, with a rounded top, and measures 1.35 metres by 0.78 metres at the base, rising to a height of 1.92 metres. It is orientated NNE to SSW, a directional choice that recurs often enough among standing stones across Munster to suggest it was rarely accidental, though what ritual or practical logic lay behind it remains a matter of debate. Standing stones of this kind are among the most enigmatic monuments in the Irish countryside; they appear singly or in pairs, occasionally in alignments, and date broadly to the Bronze Age, though precise dating is rarely possible without excavation. They may have marked territory, indicated routeways, commemorated the dead, or served astronomical purposes, and the honest answer is that no single explanation covers all of them.