It measures roughly four metres north to south and six metres east to west, rising no more than half a metre at its highest point. It has been recorded as a house, though nobody can say with confidence when it was built or by whom. That indeterminacy is part of what makes it worth noticing.

The mound sits on the summit of a prominent hillock near Ballyalla, with the Cooleen River running along the western and southern edges and a stream marking the boundary to the east. The ringfort it occupies, a type of enclosed farmstead common across early medieval Ireland typically defined by one or more circular earthen banks, predates whatever structure left this subrectangular trace. Whether the mound represents a building contemporary with the fort, a later reuse of the enclosure, or something else entirely, the record does not say. What can be said is that someone, at some point, chose this elevated and well-defended spot and left behind a shape in the ground that still registers as a place where people once lived.