The site first caught the attention of researcher Colhoun in 1946, when she documented what she described as a ‘wrecked megalith’. Alongside a standing stone that still marks the spot today, she observed several partly buried and prostrate slabs that seemed to suggest the collapsed remains of what locals might have called a ‘Giant’s Grave’, a colloquial term for portal tombs found throughout Ireland.

The mystery deepened as subsequent surveys attempted to make sense of the jumbled stones. Whilst Colhoun’s initial assessment, published in 1949, positioned the site as a potential megalithic tomb, and other scholars like Killanin and Duignan followed her lead in the 1960s, modern archaeological opinion has grown more sceptical. The site remains rough and overgrown, with large stones scattered about in no discernible pattern, making it difficult to determine whether they ever formed part of an ancient burial structure.

What makes this location particularly intriguing is not just what might have been there, but the archaeological detective story it represents. The standing stone that Lacy recorded in 1983 is definitely prehistoric, but whether its fallen companions were ever part of a tomb remains unproven. Colhoun herself revisited the site in her 1995 account, providing more detail about her original observations, yet the true nature of these stones continues to elude definitive classification. For now, the Straths stones serve as a reminder that not every ancient site yields its secrets easily, and sometimes the landscape keeps its mysteries despite our best efforts to decode them.