The stone is modest in scale, measuring roughly 0.4 metres by 0.35 metres, and carries a shallow circular basin approximately 0.16 metres across. That basin is what matters: it marks this as a bullaun stone, a type of ancient carved rock found widely across Ireland and typically associated with early ecclesiastical sites. The cup-shaped hollow was likely ground or pecked into the surface by hand, and such stones were historically credited with curative or ritual properties, with rainwater collecting in the basin sometimes regarded as having healing powers. This one has simply been absorbed into a drystone wall, its former significance obscured by the pragmatic demands of enclosing a field.

The confusion surrounding the stone has a longer history. In 1893, an observer noted that the ditch of the roadway near here contained the heel-stones of a former gateway into the church precincts, with one said to be still in its original position. A heel-stone, or spudstone, is a type of threshold or pivot stone used to support a gate, and it too would typically carry a worn depression. The suggestion now is that this gateway stone and the bullaun may be one and the same object, its identity shifting over more than a century of interpretation. To complicate things further, a second bullaun associated with the nearby graveyard has ended up in the grounds of a farmhouse to the southwest, meaning that two stones from the same small ecclesiastical site have each found their way into entirely domestic and agricultural settings, neither one where it started.