The stones spread across two adjoining townlands, Timoney Hills and Cullaun, and at their peak numbered well over two hundred. By the time a formal survey was carried out in the 1930s, many had already vanished, and later mapping recorded that 70 of 245 identified stones had been removed, along with five cairns. The individual stone catalogued as 5U, one of 46 recorded in a single field, has since left no surface trace whatsoever.

When the Inspector of National Monuments surveyed the group in 1934 to 1936, the description was frank in its puzzlement. The 221 stones then counted were called "a most remarkable group," standing or having stood between roughly 0.9 and 1.8 metres above the ground, all of red sandstone or conglomerate. What made them strange was not just their number but their arrangement, or rather the lack of it. They did not conform to any obvious prehistoric pattern, with the single exception of one stone circle in the Cullaun townland. Most prehistoric standing stones appear singly or in small ceremonial groupings, so a scatter of over two hundred stones with no apparent system is genuinely unusual. Adding to the uncertainty is the setting itself: the stones sit within the landscaped estate of Timoney Park, which belonged to the Parker-Hutchinson family. The possibility that the stones were placed or arranged by estate owners, rather than by prehistoric people, has never been fully dismissed, and it hangs over the whole site like an unanswered question.