In the spring of 1985 it fell, fracturing into two pieces and exposing the socket, the cut or worn hollow in the ground that had held it upright, possibly for thousands of years. That exposed socket is itself a small revelation: it offers a rare glimpse of the practical engineering behind these monuments, the deliberate preparation of the earth to receive and anchor a stone of considerable size.

The stone is substantial. At 6.65 metres in length and measuring 1.3 metres by 0.8 metres in cross-section, it belongs to the larger end of the standing stone tradition found across Munster, where such monuments are generally thought to date from the Bronze Age, though their precise purposes remain debated. Some are associated with burial, others with territorial marking or astronomical alignment, and many simply resist interpretation. What is known is that this one was considered worth saving. Around 1991, some six years after it came down, it was re-erected, returned to something close to its original position on the north side of the farm building where it had stood for so long beside the western field fence.