Located just a few metres southeast of another carved stone known as DON 21, this weathered surface slopes gently eastward at about 15 degrees and rests against an east-west field wall. What might initially appear as an unremarkable piece of bedrock reveals itself, upon closer inspection, to be decorated with ancient rock art.

Archaeological surveys conducted by Van Hoek in 1987 and 1988 documented the carvings on this outcrop in detail. His initial visit recorded only five faint cupmarks; circular depressions carefully pecked into the stone surface by our ancestors. However, a return visit the following year revealed the true extent of the artwork: at least 21 cupmarks of varying dimensions, alongside more complex motifs including two cups encircled by single rings, an oval cup surrounded by an oval ring, and the barely visible traces of what appears to be a cup with three concentric rings.

The heavily weathered condition of these engravings speaks to their considerable age, likely dating back several thousand years to the Bronze Age when such rock art was commonly created across Ireland and Atlantic Europe. These simple yet deliberate markings, compiled and catalogued by researcher Caimin O’Brien in 2010, represent one small piece of Ireland’s extensive prehistoric rock art tradition; a tradition that saw people marking significant places in their landscape with symbols whose meaning remains tantalisingly beyond our reach.