The confusion is partly cartographic: the Ordnance Survey marked the site on both its 1842 and 1915 six-inch editions, labelling it simply 'Cromlech', but the 1842 edition placed it roughly a hundred metres south of where it actually stands. That small discrepancy, combined with the density of the surrounding hazel, was enough to send at least one experienced researcher to entirely the wrong townland.

The tomb itself is a wedge tomb, a type of megalithic burial monument built in Ireland generally during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, characterised by a long stone chamber that narrows and lowers toward one end, with the wider, taller end typically oriented to the south-west. This example follows that convention. Its chamber widens from roughly 1.9 metres at the east end to about 2.55 metres at the west, and the surviving sidestones rise slightly as they move south-westward. The southern sidestone, at over 4.5 metres long, is the more impressive of the two; its upper edge has been dressed to a rounded profile, and its south-western corner juts forward in what has been described as a 'prow' shape. The northern sidestone survives only in fragments, though the largest piece shows a similar prow at its south-western end, and tool marks suggest it too was once carefully shaped. At the western end of the chamber, two possible endstones overlap one another, the smaller of the two perhaps functioning as a sill stone that regulated entry to the tomb's interior. A short line of six small stones runs along the north-western flank of the mound, with the north-easternmost set at a right angle to the rest, possibly marking a boundary. A later field wall, built in a different era for entirely agricultural purposes, extends from the south-eastern side of the structure.

The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp visited Rannagh East and initially failed to locate the tomb at all, recording a monument in the neighbouring townland of Termon instead. He later returned, found his error, and documented the correct site. Two other wedge tombs lie within striking distance: one about 510 metres to the south-south-west in Rannagh East, and another roughly 300 metres to the east-south-east in Termon, the very townland that had briefly stolen Westropp's attention. This small cluster of monuments, spread across adjacent townlands and partly obscured by scrub and rocky terrain, gives some sense of how densely this part of Clare was once marked by prehistoric funerary activity.