Unlike the tidy geometry of a stone circle or the solitary drama of a single standing stone, the Timoney group seems to follow no obvious pattern. That absence of system is itself the puzzle.

When the Inspector of National Monuments surveyed the area in 1934 to 1936, he counted 221 stones across the two townlands, 173 in Timoney Hills and 48 in the neighbouring townland of Cullaun. At that point, 12 of the stones in one field alone were still upstanding, with 23 lying prostrate. The stones range in height from roughly 0.9 to 1.8 metres and are all of red sandstone or conglomerate, suggesting a shared source and, presumably, a shared moment of erection. The inspector noted one obvious stone circle within the Cullaun portion, but otherwise the arrangement resisted tidy interpretation. A later survey published in the Archaeological Survey of Ikerrin by Stout in 1984 mapped as many as 245 stones, though 70 had been removed by that point, along with five cairns, a word for a mound of stones that often, though not always, marks a prehistoric burial. There is one persistent complication: the stones sit within the landscaped estate of Timoney Park, formerly associated with the Parker-Hutchinson family, and that setting has led some researchers to question whether all or some of the stones were arranged or added by estate owners rather than by prehistoric communities. The question has not been resolved.