They are modest in scale, the tallest reaching only 1.4 metres, and a walker encountering them without context might take them for old gateposts or boundary markers. They are neither. They are a prehistoric stone row, a monument type found in some concentration across Cork and Kerry, in which stones were deliberately set in linear formation, almost certainly for ritual or ceremonial purposes that remain, frankly, unclear to archaeologists.

The Gortyleahy row runs just 4.8 metres from end to end, oriented roughly east-north-east to west-south-west. What gives it a quiet geometric interest is the way the stones seem to graduate slightly in height as the row progresses south-westward: the north-east stone stands at around a metre tall, the middle stone rises to 1.25 metres, and the south-west stone to 1.4 metres. Whether this gradation was intentional, and what significance the south-west orientation might have carried for the people who erected it, is a question the monument itself does not answer. Stone rows of this kind are generally attributed to the Bronze Age, a broad span running roughly from 2500 to 500 BC, though precise dating of individual examples is rarely possible without excavation. The site was recorded and catalogued by Sean O Nualláin in 1988, as part of a systematic survey of such monuments across Munster.