In 1978, workmen came across them by chance, and in the process of doing so dislodged the capstone of one and removed some of the cremated bone inside. It is the kind of encounter that has always happened between the living and the very old dead, and it left the archaeology in a compromised but still legible state.

The grave that survives in the best-recorded condition is a cist, a type of small stone-lined burial box used widely in Bronze Age Ireland and Britain. This one is modest even by the standards of the form: roughly 58 centimetres long, 32 centimetres wide, and only 17 centimetres deep, with a long axis running north to south. It was constructed from four upright sidestones, sealed with a capstone, and lined at the base with paving slabs. The cremated bones recovered from inside were too fragmentary and undiagnostic to reveal the age or sex of the individual buried there. After the disturbance by the workmen, the cist was reconstructed, with the displaced capstone left lying nearby rather than replaced. A second cist sits roughly 4.6 metres to the south-west, and a third, more badly damaged grave lies between the two, all three forming a small cluster that suggests deliberate, repeated use of the same ground for burial.