What makes the site genuinely puzzling is not just the scale but the apparent absence of order. The stones do not align in obvious rows or arcs; they seem to follow no particular system, with the single exception of one stone circle in Cullaun. One of the stones in this field, roughly square in section and standing 1.3 metres high, sits on low marshy ground with no packing stones visible around its base, which is itself unusual. Standing stones, or orthostats, are typically prehistoric upright slabs whose original purpose remains debated, associated variously with boundary marking, ritual, or burial, but at Timoney Hills the sheer number and apparent randomness of the arrangement resists easy interpretation.

When the Inspector of National Monuments surveyed the area in 1934 to 1936, he counted 221 stones still standing, 173 in Timoney Hills and 48 in Cullaun, and described the group as "a most remarkable" one. All are of red sandstone or conglomerate, ranging from roughly 0.9 to 1.8 metres in height. A later survey published by Stout in 1984 mapped 245 stones in total, indicating that at least 70 had already been removed by that point, along with five cairns that have since vanished entirely. That attrition is significant, but so is a larger question hanging over the whole site. The stones sit within the landscaped estate of Timoney Park, formerly the Parker-Hutchinson estate, and this association with a managed private demesne has led some researchers to question whether the monuments are genuinely prehistoric or whether at least some were arranged or introduced during the period of estate improvement. That question has not been definitively resolved.