[3][4][5][6][7] According to a Historic Landscape Character Assessment (HLCA) conducted in 2006, the area was at one point "an important source of granite for the buildings of nearby Dublin".

The granites that were quarried at Baltyboys, Blessington, Woodend, Threecastles and Golden Hill in west County Wicklow, as well as those from Glencree, consist of crystals that were of smaller size having been formed at the same time, whereas granite from Three Rock Mountain and Glencullen contained conspicious crystals of mica up to half an inch (12 mm) wide..."[13]Granite of the "Glencree" variety from the eastern side of the batholith (the same side on which Barnacullia sits), were used by Viscount Powerscourt in the construction of his Powerscourt Estate (built 1731–41) and Powerscourt House (built 1771–74) in the city.

[13] According to Hayes, other granite quarries in the vicinity of Powerscourt included Toneygarrow, Lough Bray and Ballybrew, all of which are in County Wicklow.

[28] Anne Kane, who was born in 1890 and grew up on the slopes of Three Rock Mountain, was interviewed by RTÉ in 1976 and recalled how the Second Boer War (1899–1902) had brought a time of deep depression to the stoneworkings at Barnacullia quarries.

[26]: 8:10 Edgar F. Keatinge, writing in the Dublin Historical Record in 1947, recalled his upbringing in the Dublin suburb of Rathmines where he "frequently" heard Barnacullia stone being sold by street cry: "In Palmerstown Road I frequently saw a very country-looking mountainy man with a flowing beard... Well, this man was the only vendor I have ever heard selling and crying "Freestone!

Markievicz was called to a Barnacullia quarry lake on Sunday 27 July 1913, along with two members of Na Fianna, to assist when a youth named Peter Doyle got into difficulty and drowned while swimming with his friends.

[31][32] At the outset of the First World War in 1914, many stonecutters from Barnacullia moved to the granite quarry at Trefor in Wales for employment.

[26]: 11:04  After the Irish Civil War ended in 1923, many workers still remaining in Ireland were employed producing stone for repairing the buildings which had been damaged during the period, such as the GPO, Custom House and Four Courts.

Jim Murphy remembers that for the commission for Mullingar Cathedral (built 1933–1936),[34] roughly 200 stone cutters were employed at various quarries all over Three Rock Mountain for a time.

[35] In 1981, the filmmakers involved with the TV series Hands visited Barnacullia to film works onsite for its episode entitled "Stone".

[36]: 00:28  The episode included a segment on the work of Paddy Roe, a stonecutter from the Dublin Mountains, who was working on a replacement right hand for the statue of Hibernia (the female personification of Ireland) who stands as the central statue on the south pediment of the former Irish Parliament building in central Dublin.

[42] From 1960 until at least 1993, concrete buildings in Dublin were "usually" still "covered with a thin veneer or cladding of cut stone" (rarely more than 2 cm thick), according to Wyse Jackson, utilising "granite and other igneous rocks, from Wicklow, or imported from Scandinavia, Brazil and elsewhere".

[44] In August 2006, it was reported that Murphystone (the trade name of James Murphy & Sons Ltd, founded in 1890 in Dublin) were due to move to a new factory and offices near their Barnacullia quarry.

[46] In a May 2019 article in Building Ireland magazine, Tom Murphy, managing director of Murphystone, confirmed that the company were still operating from the same quarry in Barnacullia.

[1] Amongst the commercial projects Murphystone have supplied stone to include:[1] In September 2023, the 928 m2 workshed and concrete-surfaced worksite at the main quarry was advertised to let on harvey.ie, an Irish industrial and logistics property market website, under the title "Former Murphy Stone Facility, Bluelight Quarry, Barnacullia, Dublin 18, D18 E043".

In November 2024, the 928 m2 industrial unit of the "former Murphy Stone Facility, Bluelight Quarry, Barnacullia, Sandyford, Dublin 18" was put up for rent on Irish property website Daft.ie.