Stone rows, found across Ireland and Britain, are among the more enigmatic monuments of the prehistoric period; their precise function remains debated, though alignment with celestial events and their placement within broader ceremonial landscapes are recurring features. At Barbaha, the arrangement spans eight metres in total length, and each stone, ranging from 1.64 metres to 1.9 metres in height, was set carefully into the ground and stabilised with smaller packing stones wedged around its base.

The care taken in erecting these stones is actually more visible now than it might have been for most of their existence. Around the year 2010, the easternmost stone fell. It had been leaning southward for some time before that, and the reason for its instability is now plain: the stone tapers sharply towards its base, narrowing to just 0.25 metres, and only about half a metre of it had ever been embedded in the ground. When it toppled, it exposed the waterlogged socket in which it once stood, and the packing stones that had held it upright for millennia are still visible around that hollow, two of them remaining in position to the south and west of the base. It is a rare opportunity to see, in precise and unintended detail, exactly how prehistoric builders solved the practical problem of keeping a tapered, top-heavy stone vertical in boggy upland ground.