These are bullaun stones, a type of monument found widely across early medieval Ireland, characterised by one or more cup-shaped hollows ground or pecked into the rock's surface. Their exact function remains debated; some are thought to have served ritual or votive purposes, others may have had more practical uses such as grinding. What makes this particular group unusual is its scale and complexity: nine separate boulders, thirteen basins between them, and four stones gathered closely enough together to have acquired their own local name, the Seven Fonts, a title that suggests a long memory of the place even if the arithmetic no longer quite adds up.

The largest of the boulders was recorded by Patrick Healy in an unpublished Office of Public Works survey from 1972 as measuring roughly 3.5 metres by 2.6 metres, a substantial slab of granite whose convex upper face carries something even more unusual than the basins alone. Cut into that surface is a rectangular recess measuring just over a metre long and nearly three quarters of a metre wide, sunk to a depth of between fourteen and twenty centimetres, with three of the basins lying within its floor. This combination of a formal rectilinear hollow and rounded bullaun basins on the same stone is a notable feature. A short distance to the north-west, the old Ordnance Survey six-inch map records the site of a thornbush associated with St Kevin's Keeve, linking the area to the network of early Christian sites and pilgrimage routes that radiate outward from the monastic settlement at Glendalough nearby.