A 1940 Ordnance Survey map recorded the site as two standing stones, labelling them with the Irish term "galláin", the plural of "gallán", meaning a standing stone or pillar. But the ground tells a more complicated story. What the map missed, or what time has since altered, is that the group is actually three stones, and the word "anomalous" in the site's formal designation is not merely bureaucratic caution; it signals that this group does not fit cleanly into any standard monument type.

The tallest stone, just under one and a half metres high and leaning slightly to the south-west, has a long axis running north-east to south-west. About seventy centimetres to its south-west, a much larger slab, 2.4 metres in length, has fallen and now lies on the ground oriented north-west to south-east. A third, much smaller stone protrudes only 34 centimetres above ground to the south of the upright, and it is thought this modest piece may have functioned as a packing stone, wedged in to help support or stabilise the fallen slab when it was still standing. The group's exact original configuration, and its purpose, remain open questions. Adding further context to the landscape, a five-stone circle, one of a distinctive Cork and Kerry monument type typically associated with prehistoric ritual use, sits in the same field roughly seventy metres to the south-south-west, suggesting this corner of Gort na Tiobratan was, at some point, a place of some deliberate significance.