It sits on a south-facing slope of pasture, and there is, by the most recent account available, no visible surface trace of it whatsoever. That combination, a formally recorded prehistoric monument and a complete absence of anything to see, places it in a curious category of archaeological site: the place that survives only as a classification.

Standing stones are among the most common yet least understood monuments in the Irish landscape. Erected at various points during the Bronze Age and possibly earlier, they could have marked boundaries, graves, astronomical alignments, or meeting points, depending on which theory you favour and which stone you are looking at. In many cases, the stone itself has long since toppled, been incorporated into a field wall, or simply sunk beneath centuries of accumulating soil and vegetation. The Courtleigh example, recorded in the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork, Volume 1, published by the Stationery Office in 1992, falls into this last condition. It is listed, located, and categorised, but the monument proper has effectively disappeared back into the land it once marked.