One leans noticeably to the north-north-west; the other tapers towards its top. Neither is especially tall, both falling between about 1.1 and 1.15 metres in height, and yet what makes this small pair genuinely curious is not the stones themselves but the company they keep. Within a radius of roughly 23 metres, there are two further groupings classified in the same way, one sitting about 7 metres to the north-north-east, the other around 23 metres to the south-east.

The designation "anomalous stone group" is itself telling. It is the category used by archaeologists when a collection of standing stones does not fit neatly into the better-known monument types of the Irish prehistoric landscape, such as the stone circles, stone rows, or portal tombs that west Cork is otherwise well known for. The label carries an honest admission: we are not entirely sure what this is, or what it was for. Standing stones in Ireland generally date to somewhere in the Bronze Age, roughly 2500 to 500 BC, though many remain undated. The clustering of three separate anomalous groups within such a short distance of one another at Fanahy adds a layer of interest that a single pair of stones might not. Whether they represent the remains of a more complex monument, or were always intended as distinct but related features, is not recorded.