What makes it quietly odd is the presence of a second, much smaller cairn built directly on top of it, assembled from stones taken from the original structure itself. The modern cairn, roughly 2.3 metres across and 1.8 metres high, sits like a footnote on top of something considerably older and more considered, and the damage it has caused to the upper levels is plainly visible.

The cairn itself is roughly oval, measuring about 15 metres east to west and 10.5 metres north to south, and rises to a maximum height of around 3.8 metres. A cairn of this kind is a mound of stones, typically prehistoric in origin, raised over a burial or as a territorial or ceremonial marker on high ground. The base here is largely intact, built from stone slabs laid horizontally, which points to deliberate construction rather than simple stone piling. More intriguing still is an internal walkway feature, between half a metre and a metre wide, which extends around the inside of the cairn along a roughly northwest-to-northeast and southeast-to-southwest alignment, rising to about 1.4 metres above the outer ground level. The eastern portion of the cairn has sustained additional damage beyond what the modern intrusion caused, and loose stones are scattered around the perimeter. The name of the hill, the Pap of Dana, refers to the goddess Anu or Danu, a figure from early Irish mythology associated with fertility and the land; the twin summits, seen from a distance, were understood to resemble a reclining figure, and the name carried enough weight to survive into the modern map.