One school of thought holds that it was once a church. Another, perhaps more evocative, possibility is that the mound accumulated stone by stone over many years, each one deposited by a pilgrim completing devotional rounds at the site. If that second reading is correct, what looks like an unremarkable heap of rubble is actually a slow accumulation of individual acts of penance, layered up over generations.

The site, known as Kilbeg or An Chill Bheag, is identified with penitential stations marked on the Ordnance Survey maps, and the physical evidence for that association lies in a group of cross-inscribed stones within the enclosure. A bullaun stone, essentially a rock with one or more cup-shaped hollows worn or carved into its surface and frequently associated with early Christian ritual, is among them, alongside three further cross-inscribed stones. According to earlier fieldwork by a researcher named Curran, cross-inscribed stones once stood at each of the four corners of the enclosure, functioning as the fixed points around which pilgrims would have moved during their rounds. Only two of those corner stones remain standing in their original positions. A third lies loose against the southern wall, and the fourth has disappeared entirely. The mound itself measures roughly 11 metres along its longer axis and sits about 0.4 metres above the surrounding ground, with three upright stones near its western edge. The site lies about 30 metres east of Kilmore, in an area of the Corca Dhuibhne peninsula with a particularly dense concentration of early medieval remains.