Two standing stones that once rose from a natural rise here were broken up with sledgehammers around 1920, their deliberate destruction leaving only their bases recorded in unpublished topographical files. What remained was scattered further when a quarry cut into the same ground, but the fragments that turned up on the quarry's margins in the early 1990s proved unexpectedly informative.

Geochemical analysis of two sandstone fragments recovered from the quarry edge, each roughly 0.9 to 0.96 metres long, revealed that although both are carboniferous sandstone, they come from two different geological sources. One of them shares its source material with a surviving standing stone situated about 30 metres to the north-east, just across the county boundary in Kiltullagh townland, Co. Roscommon. That Roscommon stone sits on top of a low mound and has its own associated archaeology: both inhumed and cremated burials were found nearby, along with an adjacent ringbarrow, a low circular earthwork typically associated with prehistoric funerary activity. The alignment of the original Mayo stones with their Roscommon neighbour suggests the three formed a related group, perhaps a prehistoric monument strung along this elevated ridge. Adding further weight to the site's funerary character, fragmentary human bones dating to the 3rd to 6th century AD were found at the quarry itself in 1991 and may represent burials or ritual deposits once connected to the standing stones, as argued by Cribin et al. in 1994. The wider landscape reinforces this sense of long and layered use: a rath, which is a circular earthen enclosure typical of early medieval farmsteads, lies 290 metres to the south-west, and a medieval church stands 300 metres to the south-east.