Most prehistoric monuments were recorded by the first OS surveyors who swept across Ireland in the 1830s and 1840s, and again by those who revised the maps around 1904. The stone at Caol Fuinseann slipped past both surveys, which raises the question of whether it was simply missed, obscured by vegetation or field debris, or whether it had fallen and was re-erected at some later point.

The stone itself is modest but distinct. Standing 1.2 metres tall and roughly 0.7 by 0.9 metres at its base, it is subrectangular in plan, meaning it has a broadly rectangular cross-section rather than the irregular, undressed profile of a random boulder. It narrows towards the top, which is a fairly common characteristic of deliberately shaped or selected standing stones, and its long axis runs north to south. It sits in pasture on a south-facing slope at Caol Fuinseann in Mid Cork, a setting that would have been unremarkable to whoever placed it there, though the choice of a south-facing hillside for such monuments is not unusual in the Irish landscape. Standing stones of this kind are among the most enigmatic survivals of prehistoric Ireland; they may mark boundaries, graves, astronomical alignments, or routes, and the majority resist any firm interpretation.